Nijiiro
by Troid
Summary: A rainbow of colors, five girls and their five Other World counterparts, caught between shared identity, difference and sameness, and love. Short stories  and as a whole, one long story  of real self/Other Self, and yes, that is a pairing slash. Yuri.
1. Aka

Sort of a collection of oneshots, sort of one interconnected story. Not all of the parts follow the same structure as this one does.

This particular part, _Aka_, or Red, ends where it is meant to end. It has a continuation in Part Two. I should mention, it really doesn't matter what order you read the parts in (in order is recommended but not required), but that excludes continuations.

Enjoy~

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><p>Black Gold Saw is hard to understand.<p>

Saya is never sure if she is coming to Gold Saw in a dream, or if the woman is coming to her. The first number of times they meet, she can't think of anything to say. They stand there in silence, Gold Saw's glowing red eyes gazing emotionlessly upon her, until she seems to lose interest and walks away from Saya, walks off into the pale misty gray world.

Saya never follows her. The dream ends. Each time, the grayscale world becomes bars of soft morning sunlight falling upon her bed, and she wakes with butterflies in her stomach, and one more night's regret for not having said something. And most of all, she wakes with a longing to fall back asleep so she can follow Gold Saw.

Black Gold Saw is different.

One night, things finally change. As soon as Saya opens her eyes and finds herself standing in that colorless no-man's land, she turns to Gold Saw and says, "My name is Saya Irino." She hears her own voice echo back to her as if through a filter, but it is enough. Her words have reached the pale woman's ears.

Her heart speeds up as Gold Saw turns to face her. This is it. At last, she is going to talk to the one who haunts her thoughts so.

But the being's emotionless expression does not change. If anything, her eyes grow more distant, and she begins to shy away from Saya. Her boots make crunching sounds on the dusty earth. She slowly turns, beginning to walk in the opposite direction. Is she running away?

"Wait!" Saya shouts. "Black Gold Saw!" The name is alien to her lips. She has halted the woman in her tracks, so Saya shouts it again. "Black Gold Saw!"

There is no response, but the woman does not move further into the fog, either.

Determined, Saya strides forward, closing the gap between them until she is very close to the tall, older woman. This is the closest she had ever been. Gold Saw has her head half-turned, watching the girl's approach over her shoulder, and she tenses when Saya stops so close to her.

She says it once more. "Black Gold Saw." It isn't such a strange name, after all. Looking up into those brilliant red eyes for one moment longer, she reaches for Gold Saw's hand.

Immediately, the woman whirls around, pulling her hand out of Saya's reach, and she raises her sawtoothed sword. A gasp escapes Saya's lips at the threatening motion, and she takes a step backwards in shock.

Fear is written on Saya's face, mixed with hurt and confusion, but something surprisingly similar is upon Gold Saw's, too. Her thin mouth is tauter than usual, her brow furrowed just slightly. For Gold Saw, who usually expresses nothing, these small changes are tantamount to a look of terror.

She lowers the weapon right away, as though she thinks it was foolish to imagine using it. Suddenly her body begins to descend, too, and Saya realizes she is sinking into the solid earth at her feet. Before Saya's eyes, she disappears amid a ripple in the ground that then settles, leaving no trace of Gold Saw behind.

Her heart is still racing, and so are her thoughts. She is caught between fear at Gold Saw's sudden violent gesture, exhilaration at how close they had been, and bewilderment. Had the woman been scared? Where had she gone? And if she was gone, why hadn't Saya woken up yet?

Suddenly she drops to her knees, placing her palms flat on the earth where Gold Saw vanished. She wants nothing more in the world than to will herself through the surface, to descend to wherever Gold Saw, the literal woman of her dreams, has gone. She lets herself believe, actually believe, that she can feel herself sliding through like she has become insubstantial.

And then she can.

She cries out as gravity abruptly seizes her, as the ground beneath her ceases to exert a force, as she tumbles through into a fathomless void. The speed of her fall, this headfirst drop to nowhere, begins to make her dizzy, and she isn't sure whether she imagines the vibrant splashes of color that begin to flash across her vision. Streaks and bands of light begin to paint themselves around her, and there is no up or down any longer, only the fall.

She feels as though she will hit something and be killed, or continue to fall forever. She no longer remembers she is dreaming. Either way, this cannot be the way the woman went. She has lost her chance to reach out and touch Gold Saw.

She does not register the red glow that is beginning to wash out all the other colors. Her mind has faded almost to unconsciousness, or in this case wakefulness, when she feels strong arms wrap themselves around her body and stop her fall.

Black Gold Saw is just the same as her.

It is several nights before she dreams of Gold Saw again. Each morning is a disappointment, and her days are a struggle to keep vivid images of long dark hair, a pointed chin, two red ringed eyes, from preoccupying her. She has little success.

The night she returns to the familiar gray world, something is strange. The world is just as she remembers, just as she has come to expect, with its dusty reaches dotted by old and crumbling columns, arches, and daises, but it feels different. It feels as though it is somehow not enough. Her memories of the last dream have faded somewhat, but she senses that there is something else, something more: something beyond this monochrome world.

She shakes off the odd feeling, and looks around. Saya cannot see Gold Saw when she first opens her eyes upon the old-but-different landscape.

She gives a start as she looks down to find Gold Saw lying on the earth very near her, asleep.

Saya had never imagined one of the inhabitants of this other world sleeping, but then, why _shouldn't_ Gold Saw sleep? Cautious of waking her from her slumber, Saya moves to her side on tiptoes. She kneels down, and just looks at her. The woman is older than she is, certainly, but not much older. Her serious, sharp features somehow have a look of innocence to them, and with her eyes shut and her being relaxed, she appears completely at peace.

Looking closer, Saya is surprised to see herself reflected back in those features. She has never realized just how much alike she and Gold Saw look, only really noting their similar hairstyles. She wonders, why does she see it so clearly now?

_Because you're asleep. I'm asleep._ And with that, another morning reaches her. In the sleepy moments where she still fully remembers the dream, she wonders if Gold Saw is waking up at that moment, too.

Black Gold Saw is a long-term goal.

Each night she dreams of the beautiful, silent woman, she brings her hand just a little bit closer to touching her before stopping. Always, Gold Saw looks tense and never moves a muscle, but there is no threat any longer. Every time Saya finds herself in the gray world, she sees that Gold Saw has put down her sword. It's obvious that she does it just before Saya appears, and Saya can't stop smiling the first time she realizes Gold Saw has been doing that for her.

One night and then a night later, and one hair's breadth closer to taking Gold Saw's hand. Sometimes Saya talks to the woman, tells her about her own life, and sometimes she asks her questions she doesn't expect to have answered, and sometimes she is as silent as her almost-mirror. Always, though, she moves her hand closer to Gold Saw and then stops.

Black Gold Saw is frightening.

One night out of hundreds, she and Gold Saw are not alone in the world the color of ash. That night, she opens her eyes to find Gold Saw dueling a hooded figure whom Saya cannot see well, as though a veil separates them. All she can see clearly is the bright blue flame that surrounds the being's eye, and the deadly, bloodstained sword it wields.

She watches as Gold Saw attacks again and again, the clang of metal as their blades meet strangely muted. Saya wants to call out, to tell her to stop. She senses that something about this newcomer is bad, but she has eyes only for Gold Saw and the look of intense hatred upon her face. That expression, the fury of her assaults, and the single-minded way she aims only to kill all scare Saya. She wants to call out, but she cannot find her voice.

When she wakes up it is for the first time a relief, and she cries softly for minutes. Gold Saw, her Gold Saw, shouldn't have to fight like that. That fighting couldn't be right. She had wanted so much to believe in the innocence she'd seen in the woman's sleeping face… Did she still live in a world where that violence was necessary? The thought hurt her.

Black Gold Saw is hers.

The night after her dream of the fight, Saya moves her hand close to Gold Saw's, and then stops. And then she moves closer.

"Black Gold Saw," she whispers, sliding her fingers over the woman's wrist before suddenly bringing her other hand up to touch her cheek. "I've been waiting for you."

Gold Saw doesn't flinch as Saya caresses her. In her eyes is a look that says plainly, _I've been waiting for you._

Saya smiles, the expression tinged with sadness. "I don't want you to fight anymore, okay?"

Turning her own hand so her knuckles face up, Gold Saw brushes one finger under Saya's chin. Saya shivers at the contact. "I don't want you to fight," she repeats. Those bright red eyes gaze down at her with tenderness. She goes on. "This world doesn't need more fighting."

Careful with her sharp fingertips, Gold Saw strokes Saya's hair, teasing locks out and letting them drift back into place, leaning in so she is closer and better able. Saya can hear her own heartbeat pounding in her ears as Gold Saw's face comes very near hers.

"I'll be getting a job soon," she says, breathing a little hard. "I'm going to be a school counselor. I'll make sure nobody has to suffer." Her fingers entwine with Gold Saw's. "Not even you." She holds tightly. "Especially not you."

She isn't sure who leans in first, only that a moment later their lips are together, and she is safe in the arms of the one closest to her heart just as Gold Saw is safe in hers, and never has she felt so cemented and secure at the very core of her being. Around it all is the softness of Gold Saw's lips to the hardness of her claws, and the lightheaded dizziness that is her first kiss. She doesn't ever want to let go.

Years pass.

A red glow…begins to wash out all the other colors.

Everything is different.

Black Gold Saw is…


	2. Orenji

This probably could have gotten done a little faster if I had just sat down and written it. For the record, I had this part all thought through before episode 8 aired. There is a continuation Part Two of this one as well.

_Orenji_ is...well, I think you can guess the translation.

So, enjoy your much less vague yuri. Your reviews are always appreciated!

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><p>"If you're not the one running from her problems…who is?"<p>

It is the first time in over a decade that Strength has heard Yuu's voice. She wants to feel joy at the sound, but she can find none, find nothing except loss, fear, and pain.

Strength sits between two worlds as these echoes of the girl she wants so much to protect reach her. In one world there is heat and light and flames, an orange glow that falls over everything, and at the heart of all that brightness and noise a shifting stricture hovers. It is composed of many cubes, which slide and rotate and tumble past one another, creating a monstrous cacophony of rumbles and slams. This world, this deepest, hellish layer of a dimension governed by color, burns its imprint in Strength's mind. But in the other world, nothing burns. In that world, Strength sits on a grassy slope that looks down upon a calm river, its surface slowly painted from blue to warm gold by the setting sun.

_This_ is the world Yuu should live in.

If Yuu lived in this world, Strength would live amid the flames, or worse, in the gray wasteland of corpses. But that…that would be all right.

Amid the flames…

Dark spatters of ephemeral blood are thrown over Yuu's body as she stands in the path the hail of bullets take. She bucks, letting out a strangled cry of pain, but doesn't attempt to move away. A hideous smile is upon her bloodied face. "See?" She shouts it over the sick thuds the metal slugs make against her body. "It hurts! I get hurt!"

In the peaceful world, Strength flinches. Sharing this level of consciousness with Yuu, she can feel the pain Yuu feels as she is shot, but that agony isn't what wounds Strength the most. She can only think of Yuu.

"This isn't how it's supposed to be," she whispers.

"Are you trying to tell me what to do?" Yuu shouts at her, and Strength cringes again. Ten years in which they haven't spoken, and this is how Yuu addresses her. "You're nothing but the _other_ me!" As she speaks, Yuu leaps away from the bullets and comes to rest atop a tower of stationary cubes.

Strength no longer knows what to say. She has all but forgotten that she's supposed to try to reach Mato. She is all but oblivious to everything, to the heat, the light, the noise, to everything save Yuu.

"You're mine, right?" Yuu's desperate tone makes Strength shiver. "You'll never leave me, will you? You'll help me, right?" Yuu is mocking her. Mocking what Strength swore to her all those years ago.

All those years ago…

It wasn't always like this, was it?

Strength remembers how it used to be. She couldn't see it back then, but that was the time when things were as they should have been, how they should have stayed: Yuu lived in the peaceful world, and Strength lived in the world of ashen blood. Not colors, because back then Strength could not see colors.

The moment she began to see them was the moment everything went wrong.

Yet…that moment was the most wonderful of Strength's life, because that was the moment she met Yuu.

o – o – o

She didn't recognize the blue demon for what it was, since back then it was as grayscale as everything else. All Strength knew was that it was dangerous, possibly the most dangerous being in that world, and her every instinct screamed at her to just run from it. But in that world, there was no running. There was only fighting, endless, bloody fighting.

The blue demon feinted, lifting its sword to point at Strength's face, and she immediately raised her bulky hands to protect herself. The moment her lower half was unprotected, the blue demon ducked under her guard and sliced her across her belly. The world froze.

The next thing Strength knew, she was pitching over the side of the chasm they had battled along, stunned and unable to correct her balance. She was too shocked to cry out as she plummeted into the misty, inky depths of the canyon, her mind blank, her insides lit with dull fire. Somewhere between the sky and the ground, Strength realized she was going to die.

By the time her brain caught up with the fatal wound the blue-gray demon had given her, she had come to rest at the rocky bottom of the gorge, and there was much more injury to register then.

She lay there, her body broken beyond repair, what little life she had left slowly leaking out through the hole in her midsection, flipped on her back by the fall to stare up at the pallid sky. The already blunted pain was fading gradually, and her consciousness along with it. She didn't feel anything, really. Strength never thought or felt anything. It was all instinct. Kill or be killed. Gray on gray ashes. So she would die.

"You can't die."

The voice came to her in a thrum, a pulse like a heartbeat, and then there was a moment of silence.

Suddenly, the pain was gone. In its place was lightness, light, as though the mist around her had been cleared away by rays of sunlight the gray world didn't have. She could feel her battered body start to become whole, somehow healed by the light, and as her vision cleared, she thought she could see a strange glow in the sky above her. It was…a color? Orange?

Whatever the significance of the color, if she really had seen it, she was distracted by a new, wonderful sensation. It felt as if someone's slender arms had wrapped themselves around her, and was holding tight. Strength had never been touched before, not by anything but blades and spikes and stone. The sensation was so incredible, so_ good_, that it awoke something deep within her. The insubstantial contact vanished, and Strength sat up with a gasp, feeling a spectrum of emotions course through her.

That was the moment she began to feel, and the moment she learned about Yuu.

And that was the moment it all went wrong, because from then on the emotion she felt most was fear.

After that, nothing remained of her old way of seeing the world. The one who killed so many of the others was not just another faceless enemy; it was the blue demon, whose existence was a terrible threat to Yuu's soul. Her own blood wasn't just blood, it was Yuu's pain. And somewhere, beyond the borders of the gray wasteland which every day became more riddled with corpses, she sensed for the first time that there was something more. The world where Yuu lived, maybe.

But all that paled before her awareness of Yuu herself. As she realized just what of Yuu was held inside herself, her existence changed completely. Now she ran from enemies, especially the blue demon, in terror of being killed and erasing so much of Yuu's being. But other thoughts, perhaps the exact inverse, crept into her mind: If she, Strength, died… Wouldn't Yuu be free of the pain that had burdened her all her life?

More than once, she almost lowered her guard in the face of a killing blow, or stood at the lip of a crevasse and considered hurling herself over the edge. But every time, her ever-present collection of wounds would heal, which only happened when Yuu's mind brushed close to her own. Every time, the relief was accompanied by the feeling of Yuu's touch. And every time, that reminded her of Yuu's willingness to endure.

If Yuu could shoulder that kind of pain in reality, Strength could accept whatever portion of it was passed on to her.

But the fear never went away.

Her existence was about Yuu and only Yuu from that point on. Every day she saw a little deeper into Yuu's being, every day she felt deeper grief at some painful memory she found there. It was as though each day that passed strengthened her connection with the girl, and before long, Strength knew everything about her. After that, she began to sense—not see, but sense—things that happened to Yuu in the present moment. She felt what Yuu felt. And nothing could have been more painful.

Over time, she could see the parts of Yuu not even Yuu could. She could see the happy, excitable girl who might have existed if her life had been different. She could see the mature, kind woman she might have become. She saw all of Yuu, inside and out, and her desire to help the girl only grew stronger. What had started as mere wonder at seeing into the mind of the one whose soul sustained Strength herself had become affection. And that affection defined her every waking moment.

And one day…

o – o – o

Strength huddled amid the remains of a ruined structure, perhaps a cathedral, though buildings and their architecture meant nothing in that world. Her knees were drawn up to her chest, and the exhaustion from fighting and running—mostly running, because she couldn't bear even small risks to Yuu then, not after seeing the girl's heart as she had—made her head droop forward, but she couldn't afford to sleep. She did her best to keep a wary eye on the surroundings, trying to focus on the pain from her usual injuries to keep herself awake.

She had almost slipped into unconsciousness, which surely would have meant her death, when she felt Yuu's hand on her shoulder. With that soothing touch came a wash of light that erased the wounds her body bore.

Suddenly she wanted to scream. "W-why? Why are you taking _my_ pain?" Her voice was choked with oncoming tears. She _wanted_ to shout at Yuu, but couldn't find the anger. "If I died… You…"

"No." Strength sat up straight, eyes wide, shocked and suddenly feeling butterflies in her stomach to hear Yuu respond. "Even if you die and take my pain with you, in this world I'll always face more pain down the road. There is no world more painful than this one."

Strength's jaw clenched as she tried to hold back her tears. "Then why are you healing me?"

"Don't worry," said Yuu. Her voice was flat but soft, and if Strength didn't know her better—better than anyone else, in any world—she could have sworn there was a hint of tenderness in her words. "It doesn't hurt me." She paused. "In that world, all you have to do is fight. It's so much easier to understand."

"Yuu…" It was the first time Strength had said the girl's name. She wished more than anything that she could go to Yuu's world. She wished she could hold her.

"Hurting others, being hurt… You don't like it there, do you, Strength?" Yuu's voice was becoming quieter, yet it was growing clearer, too. "I don't like it here."

She didn't say anything. What was Yuu…?

"Hey…let's switch."

Strength's heart stopped.

"I'll stay in that world, and you shoulder reality."

No.

"We can switch, and I'll never be hurt like this again."

She was being sucked up into a great vacuum of white and black nothing.

"I'll stay in this world…"

_No!_

"You shoulder reality…"

And everything was gone.

o – o – o

"Why did you do that?"

Those were her first words to Yuu when, weeks later, she first succeeded in reaching the girl in that other world. In that week she thought she had run from anger to sadness so many times she wasn't sure what she felt any longer.

"This is wrong!" she shouted at Yuu when the girl didn't speak. "You don't belong in that world."

Yuu still didn't answer immediately. Speaking with the same invisible presence in Strength's mind as Strength was in hers, she finally said, "You aren't the one who decides that."

"This isn't my world." Strength couldn't keep the anger in her voice long as she imagined Yuu alone in that ugly wasteland of pain…and she couldn't keep her voice from trembling when she imagined Yuu in the wasteland but not alone. "And that isn't yours."

There was no answer.

"You'll be hurt," Strength said pleadingly. "You could die!"

Yuu spoke slowly, as if to make sure Strength heard and understood her. "I won't face reality ever again. This world is my home now."

"You don't know what's out there!" Strength's nights were still haunted by nightmares of the blue demon finding Yuu. "What…" She swallowed the feeling within her chest she knew all too well was the precursor to tears. "What's so bad about your life? You had that girl. You had a friend!"

Silence. It was hard to feel Yuu's emotions through the link they shared, as if Strength's state of unconscious wasn't deep enough… Or was Yuu pulling away from her? She continued, "Just when things were getting better, you decided to switch with me? After all this time? You're just running from your problems!"

"So?" Yuu's voice was cold.

"I just don't understand…" Strength realized she was close to waking up. _I can't stand to think of you in that world._ Suddenly, she cried, "Let me stay there with you, too!"

Yuu's reply was only a softly spoken "What?"

There was dagger's edge in the word, but Strength ignored it. "We can stay in that world together," she said desperately. In her mind, in the strange grayness that seemed to be her medium to reach Yuu in the world of colors, she grasped in vain as if she could somehow touch Yuu. "I'm yours, only yours. Let me help you!" She was begging now. "I'll protect you. I'll never leave you!" _Just don't make me live in this world knowing you're suffering there…knowing you could meet the blue demon, and have the life torn from your body!_ "Please, Yuu. I know everything about you. I don't want you to be hurt."

Again, dead silence.

"I… Ever since you came to me in that world, since you h-held me…" Strength didn't know what she was saying. Held her? She knew Yuu's arms had just been a ghost of a sensation from another world, but she couldn't stop. "I thought of you every waking moment… The more I saw of you, and your life, the more I wanted to help you… I can't just live in this world and leave you there!" There was a word for how she felt about Yuu, or at least she thought there was. "I…I love y—"

"Shut up!"

Yuu's shout ripped through her. The gray space turned stormy in an instant.

Strength felt her heart beginning to fragment in her chest.

"You don't know anything." Yuu spoke with quiet anger. "Don't try to talk about things you don't understand. I'll never let you come here, never."

Strength was shocked into silence. She hardly understood what she had said herself, but her request to join Yuu in the other world… She hadn't imagined Yuu would possibly refuse her. Why…?

"If you want to help me, there's only one thing you can do," said Yuu, sounding calmer. "Do you promise you'll do it?"

"Yes," Strength said automatically. She had an inkling of the kind of order she was about to receive, but she didn't care.

"Then… Never—" Suddenly Yuu trailed off. Strength almost thought it sounded like… Had her voice broken? But Yuu spoke again the next moment, and her voice was steady. She said, "Never talk to me again."

The dream dissolved in violent orange flames.

o – o – o

Amid the flames…

"You'll help me…right?"

Standing atop the large, ever-shifting mountain of cubes, Yuu suddenly looks small. She repeats it, in a whisper. "You'll help me, right?"

Strength isn't sure what to think. In that orange glow, her memories are mixed with the present, and she remembers so clearly Yuu telling her to stop talking, silencing her promises. Now, Yuu is mocking her for them again…isn't she?

She could never understand why Yuu decided to switch just at the time when her life was beginning to turn around.

"You'll never leave me, will you?" There is a look in Yuu's eyes as if she is surprised by what she's saying. Slowly, she turns, and her eyes find Strength even though Strength is only really inside her. "You're mine…" She flinches. "Why am I…?"

Neither of them has any idea why she's saying these things, then.

"No." Yuu is shaking her head, talking to herself as much as to Strength. "I forgot all this. I don't remember it. I don't remember you." She bites her lip, her face suddenly twisted with anguish, and it startles Strength to see tears pooling in her eyes. "I… Strength, help me…"

The moment she says those words, Strength feels her connection to the girl return in full for the first time since she was pulled from the cathedral and to another world. For the first time in over ten years she sees into Yuu's heart and understands what she feels. Suddenly, those words, echoes of promises Strength tried to make to her so long ago, make sense.

She could never understand why Yuu wouldn't let her stay in the other world, too.

She could never understand, until now.

Yuu wanted to forget those promises, and she wanted to forget Strength. Back then, when she denied Strength her wish to go back to the world colors, it was because she wanted to cut herself off from Strength completely, and that's why she told her never to speak to her again. All those things Strength understands, but they seem obvious now. There is only one thing which shakes her to her core.

She knows why Yuu switched places with her. The real reason.

And she feels her heart well up and overflow with love for the girl who would make a sacrifice like that, just so an emotionless being in another world could come to reality, make friends, and be free from the constant pain and fear of that wasteland.

Yuu wanted an escape, too. But Strength can see every detail etched into her soul in that instant, and the girl's true reason for the switch is clear. For as long as Strength had watched her life, after they'd first met, Yuu had watched hers twice as long before. Somehow Yuu had come to understand what Strength was and how she bore her pain. And Yuu, to whom no one had ever shown kindness, decided she would hand over her life—with her freedom from her parents, with the girl who cared about her—to Strength.

She doesn't care about the situation anymore. "Yuu!" she shouts with emotion constricting her throat. She doesn't care about the flames. "Thank you so much!" She doesn't care about the different worlds. "All the wonderful things I got to experience, all the people I got to meet…I want to tell you!" She cares about one thing, one person. She cares about Yuu. "Let me tell you everything good that's happened to me because of you!" Strength is crying with happiness. "I—"

The purple demon's fist snaps shut around Yuu's head, and everything is black nothing.


	3. Kiiro

Well, I finished it, anyway. There were things I wanted to include that just didn't end up fleshed out very well, but to be honest, this isn't the first pairing to anyone's mind when they think of the real self/Other self dynamic, anyway. You know I love to hear your feedback no matter what!

Recommended viewing (**after** reading): pixiv ID 25905071

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><p>Kagari doesn't dream very much anymore.<p>

After the accident, the world she knew as a child condensed itself slowly but surely into one thing: Yomi. The more Yomi stayed with her to help her in her new life in a wheelchair, the more pitiably isolated she became, and the more pitiable she was, the more time Yomi spent with her. With everything about her going to and coming from Yomi, Yomi was what she dreamt of, too.

They weren't good dreams. At first Yomi just seemed distant in them, a little out of reach, slowly drifting away from her, and that wasn't enough to make Kagari awaken with more than a feeling of unease. But as Kagari grew up, they got worse. Enough nights she awoke with a scream, drenched in cold sweat, that she simply decided to stop dreaming. And she did, leaving her sleep filled with nothing but the same dull numbness she was used to from her waking thoughts.

It worked for years, and that's why it is such a surprise to Kagari when she dreams one night of a world that isn't her own.

Parts of dolls, jumbles of broken toys, and scattered pieces of candy compose the backdrop in this strange world, all vastly oversized so some tower like mountains. Kagari finds herself standing amid this strange, pretty chaos, standing on her own feet for the first time in a long time. The dream is very vivid, but it is still a dream, and Kagari doesn't feel strange standing at all. She walks without taking in the scenery; as with any dream, the bizarre world doesn't seem like anything out of the ordinary.

Kagari isn't asleep, though she doesn't realize it any more than she realizes that she's dreaming. But she does realize she isn't alone.

When the girl with the golden eyes appears, Kagari stops in her tracks, but she doesn't feel scared—at least, not right away. Instead, she feels…

Whatever it is, she spends a moment taking in the other girl's appearance. She is striking even beyond those almost luminescent eyes, with pale skin clad in finery. Her clothes and her posture make Kagari think she looks regal, and of course she can't miss the oversized, spiky coronet that tops the girl's head of long flowing blonde hair. Her large hands look more like claws, but even those are not her most prominent feature: that position is clearly occupied by the powerful, metallic wheels that take the place of her feet. The girl's aura exudes power, superiority.

Kagari doesn't let that affect her. Standing on her own two feet, she feels tall, and powerful, too. And while it's true she feels no fear from the presence of the crowned girl, she still watches her warily, for a very simple reason. Even under her suspicious gaze, however, the other girl does not shy away.

Kagari's reason comes from remembering what it was like when she used to dream. In the dreams she had after the accident, there were only ever three things: Kagari herself, Yomi, and forces that wanted to take Yomi away from her. And that told her this girl, this _thing_, whatever it was, must want to take Yomi, too. So she doesn't let her guard down, and only waits there in silence.

The other girl stays silent, too. On her face is a calm expression, but behind her gaze there is an intensity which unsettles Kagari.

It doesn't occur to Kagari to go elsewhere, or do anything else _but_ look back at the crowned girl. And yet, it's not just that—with those golden eyes fixed on her, she can't look away. Kagari doesn't realize that she could have woken up and fallen asleep the next night repeatedly by the time she decides to seat herself on one of the many piles of debris scattered around that strange world of toys, candy, and endless checker patterns.

Sitting there, looking up at the girl with the golden eyes, she allows herself to relax. Whoever this girl is, she isn't trying to steal Yomi; not at the moment, at least. Their mutual silent vigil continues, each regarding the other and nothing else, and for the first time Kagari wonders just what the girl is trying to figure out about _her_. Whatever the crowned girl wants, though, Kagari doesn't feel unsettled anymore. Gradually she grows used to the other girl's presence.

Gradually, it begins to feel like if the girl left, Kagari would miss her. Before long, it's strange to imagine that other world without the girl being a part of it.

It strikes her at some point that the girl's features are somehow familiar. She doesn't know why she only noticed after this long taking it in, but… She looks almost like…Kagari?

That discovery surprises her, and a whole host of other thoughts and questions accompany it. Does the girl not quite know where she is, either? Does she have her own Yomi, who she's afraid Kagari will take away from her? Has she just realized Kagari looks like her, too?

But no. The way the girl appeared, it looked as if she knew her way around the strange world. She hadn't looked frightened of Kagari, either, or hostile toward her; in fact, she had done everything to appear unthreatening. And as for the last question… Kagari thinks perhaps that recognition has been in her eyes all along. Then, as if she can see this new understanding in Kagari's own expression, the girl with the golden eyes begins to move toward her, gliding over the checker-print ground, holding out a hand…

Suddenly Kagari is scared. It's the kind of fear she would still feel even if she knew she was dreaming. She's scared because she doesn't know what it would mean to touch this almost-mirror of herself, what it means that this girl who looks so much like her is here in the first place. Her fear morphs into anger, and she shouts, "Stay where you are!"

Her voice echoes through what sounds like the entirety of the strange world before fading away. The crowned girl has stopped, the two wheels still again, and the twin orbs of her eyes motionlessly fixed on Kagari. "Don't come any closer," commands Kagari, backing away, stumbling slightly. "I don't want you here…" The other girl only watches.

The stumbles grow worse, and Kagari almost loses her footing and falls. She can feel her legs shaking. With every step she takes away from the crowned girl they become weaker, until finally she tries to take a step and collapses to the ground.

Hands and pride both stinging and arms battered from the fall, she pushes herself up to a sitting position, still facing away from the other girl. Her legs will not move. Stunned, empty, and still angry at something she can't put her finger on, she stares into the distance, where the hazy pink sky of the world seems to tint everything impossibly yellow. A minute passes in the same silence as before.

A barely audible whirring sound that grows slightly louder tells Kagari the girl is approaching her again. As she draws near, Kagari can feel the strength returning to her legs, stronger with every arm's reach by which the girl shortens the distance between them. When she stops just behind Kagari, it doesn't feel like her legs could have possibly failed her. Kagari turns to look over her shoulder and sees the girl offering her hand a second time.

Kagari turns away abruptly, the kind of gesture that looks like a _Hmph._ She wishes the girl with the golden eyes would just leave, just leave her alone. There is something unbearably open, unbearably welcoming about the way she reaches out for her, and Kagari can't bring herself to accept it. Maybe the old Kagari could have, the Kagari from back when her dreams were good ones, but not Kagari now. She will not touch the girl, because that would mean…something.

The choice is taken away from her when the girl kneels and wraps her arms around Kagari. "What—" Kagari is frozen for an instant, and then she tries to break free. "G-get off!" The girl's hold, her hug, is tight, enveloping, and a little possessive, but it is tender as well. Kagari's struggles amount to nothing, and gradually she stops fighting the other girl.

The girl's embrace feels nice.

The girl holds Kagari to her, closing her eyes as if in repose, her chin resting on Kagari's shoulder. Kagari keeps her eyes open, unable to keep a displeased expression off her face. It feels nice, but she will not admit it. Being comforted by this girl with wheels for feet in a strange world of dolls… She, Kagari, doesn't allow anyone to get this close to her. It _does_ feel nice…

She will not admit it, but she feels she could stay in the girl's arms forever.

The closer the other girl is, the more whole Kagari feels. It isn't just her legs. Somehow, being near the girl makes all the hurt and resentment inside Kagari fade away, as though the girl can take all the bad parts of her and piece together Kagari—just Kagari, Kagari who's had a normal life even after the accident.

She wants to be even closer to the girl, but she doesn't know how.

But one glance over is all it takes, for it brings her face very close to the other girl's, and from there they're only a hair's breadth from a kiss. And that distance vanishes.

o – o – o

Kagari doesn't see the other girl leave her. She doesn't see the fight. She doesn't see the girl who looks like Yomi. All she sees is the moment when the girl with the star on her back moves her sword in a sudden flash and beheads the girl with the golden eyes.

o – o – o

She stands over the scattered pieces of what used to be the girl who held her. "Look at you," she says with disdain. "You were supposed to be strong." The girl who kissed her. "You were supposed to help me." The girl who looked so much like her. "You couldn't even help yourself…"

Suddenly Kagari is shouting. "What was all that for? All the time you spent with me? Was that just so I could come back and find you dead?" There is no answer form the shattered almost-mirror of herself. Of course there's no answer. "I never asked for your help!" Kagari's cries are furious. "I never asked for you! I never asked for your l-…love…" She's shaking now, and not from rage.

She wants to feel anger—no, she wants to feel nothing. She should be indifferent to the fate of this girl in a world that isn't her own. And yet…she feels…

Tears begin to run down her cheeks. She would be astonished at the sensation of crying, something she hasn't felt since the day of the accident, but she can think of nothing but the loss of that girl who loved her enough to give strength to the legs Kagari always could have walked on if she hadn't bound them in her own misery. She falls to her knees beside what remains of the other girl, and cries herself to sleep. And she awakens.

She awakens, but a piece of her is left there in that other world, where it rests among those of the girl with the golden eyes.

o – o – o

A week later, Kagari dreams again of the world with the yellow glow, the world with the pink sky, but she doesn't remember ever having been there before. Her memories are different, and so is her appearance—her long hair has been replaced by one ponytail on the side of an otherwise short cut.

She walks through that strange world, not sure where she is, where she came from, or where she's going. Nothing draws her, nothing calls to her. All the same, a jumble of distinct shapes catch her eyes that are set apart from the dolls, toys, candy, endless patterns of checkerboard… There Kagari finds, scattered around her, the pieces of…something broken.

Something broken, and something long lost to her.

The golden eyes follow Kagari as she approaches; somehow, whatever the broken thing used to be, even with its head apart from and at the wrong angle to the body, is still alive. Kagari feels like it ought to be frightening, but it isn't. She gazes into those eyes in silence, and they look back at her. There is something in them she can't name, some kind of quiet…acceptance? Understanding?

Whatever it is, she feels sad. These pieces of a girl should be together, but Kagari knows she can't put them back in place. The more she looks, the more Kagari thinks the girl looks almost like…like her? She kneels beside the girl's crowned head, holding in her hand a few macarons. Not knowing what else to do, what else she can do, she reaches out and gives one of the sweets to the girl to eat.

The feeling of loss in her chest only gets worse.

o – o – o

Dreams come and go. Just as she had after the accident, Kagari stops dreaming. It is as if by choice, as if she doesn't want to have any more dreams of the broken pieces of the girl with the golden eyes—although, she doesn't remember that dream after waking up.

When she stopped dreaming after the accident, Kagari forgot about the crowned girl whom she'd dreamed of just once as a very young child. And so now, when again her dreams stop, she forgets about that girl again.

Everything is empty.

o – o – o

One evening after classes, with the brilliant yellow setting sun bathing her in its warmth, Kagari falls asleep.

And she wakes up, but continues to sleep still.

There she finds the other world, the world where dolls, toys, and sweets loom like mountains, where a pink sky casts everything in a warm yellow light. As soon as she finds herself in that world, she remembers everything. And as her memories become whole, so does the fragmented body of Chariot. And the girl with golden eyes brings the piece of Kagari back to her: she brings back Kagari's heart.

In Kagari's own world, where her head rests on her arms atop her desk, she is crying tears of happiness.

With the girl by her side again, she feels she has the strength to do anything, not just walk. She has people to apologize to do, things to make up for, and she knows she can accomplish all that, but in this moment she only thinks of the present. And in that moment, one kiss is all it takes to mend the pieces of Kagari into something whole.


	4. Midori

It's finally done, and do I mean finally. Somehow the chapter I thought was going to get the least attention (besides maybe Kiiro) ends up being the longest so far? Well, anyway, this long hiatus stuff is officially over. I have **_big important_ _plans_ **for writing things, and these hangups are not going to get in my way any longer.

I have to say it—I really owe Akar a big debt of thanks for this one, for looking this chapter over and helping me turn it from an awful mess into a less awful, tidier mess. Also, remember when I said there was no particular order? I lied.

* * *

><p>It strikes Yomi how sad the girl looks. Sadness isn't an emotion she can remember seeing in Dead Master before, and recently she has seen her almost constantly, every night and even in her waking thoughts. Yomi remembers seeing malice, anger, hate. She remembers seeing Dead Master's endless desire to possess things, and her reckless desire to destroy everything. Now, bound in thick chains at the feet of the veiled, silent girl, Yomi can see sadness written deep in her eyes.<p>

Yomi used to be so frightened of Dead Master.

She feels her presence incessantly, trying to claw her way into Yomi's life. Into her relationships and emotions. It terrifies her, because she has long understood what Dead Master is capable of, and anything that devilish girl inside is capable of, she is capable of, too. Two equally strong desires radiate from Dead Master: the desire to possess, and the desire to destroy. Some things she hates and wants to obliterate, and some thing she covets with gnawing hunger. Sometimes those desires overlap.

Yomi feels shades of all these horrible emotions, and those shades are growing stronger.

Is it still jealousy if there's an urge to destroy something as well as possess it?

What scares Yomi the most isn't those black emotions of Dead Master's. It isn't even the way it becomes difficult to distinguish what she feels from what Dead Master feels, though that frightens her as well. What scares Yomi the most is that she doesn't know just what Dead Master wants with _her_.

The first time she became aware of Dead Master was while she was asleep, and anyone would have considered it a dream, but Yomi knew very well that it wasn't. It was as simple as that.

The world is a barren emptiness cast in weak light by a sky colored a bruised and ugly shade of darkness. The ground is sometimes dead rock and sometimes an insubstantial surface of vivid, glowing green which might be solid or liquid or mist with no ground at all. Dotting that wasteland are thousands of gravestones, some in clusters or rows and some spread apart across the flat horizon. The tombs have no names, and it's hard to say if there is even earth to bury anything in. Where Yomi finds herself that night, though, beneath her feet there are the dusty tiles of a cathedral.

It's decrepit, dead, just like everything else in that world. Standing at its center, at the heart of the mist and graves is a girl with a veil, Gothic dress, and a scythe. Dead Master. Yomi knows it right away—surrounded by a world like this, who else could it be? The name simply comes to Yomi and it fits.

Dead Master didn't do anything the first time she saw Yomi. She hardly even looked at her.

Thinking about it, that probably made the first time she did even worse.

She sees the chains that hang from the walls begin to shift. Some move the distance of a few links, their motion snakelike, and some sway softly. Apprehensive, Yomi continues on her way through the arched chamber, wondering briefly if she can wake herself up if she isn't dreaming. The silence punctuated by her footfalls on the stone is abnormally heavy.

Dead Master is there a second time, and this time Yomi's breath hitches in her chest upon seeing the girl, because those brilliant green eyes are now looking right back at her. Yomi wants to say something, wants to ask any one of a dozen questions. Who are you? Where are we? How did I get here? But no words occur to her under that baleful gaze, a gaze with a curious duality in it: It makes Yomi realize she isn't welcome, but at the same time it makes her feel as though Dead Master wants her to stay there forever.

At first she just looks back at Dead Master in silence, but she is all too aware of the chains slithering along the floor towards her. So she takes a step forward, since there are coils of chains behind her, too, and holds out a hand to Dead Master.

_I want…_

Dead Master's hand collides with Yomi's face forcefully enough to knock her off her feet and send her tumbling into the waiting arms of the chains. Immediately the metal links begin encircling her limbs, but with a shock of adrenaline coursing through her, Yomi manages to pull herself free, and she dashes away. Cheek stinging and head swimming from the vicious backhand, she doesn't look to see if Dead Master is following her, but the echoey rattling that obscures her pounding footsteps tells her the chains are.

She stumbles out the door of the cathedral, chest heaving, prepared to run into the dead green-gray wasteland. But before she knows it, that world is gone, and it is the morning of her third day of school.

That day, she feels those clawed fingers of Dead Master's picking at the edges of her mind. She feels them the day after, too, and the day after that. She doesn't feel anything more, no emotions or anything similar. But she has the sense that something which should have stayed a nightmare is slowly getting closer to manifesting in her waking thoughts.

Most nights, they pick up where they left off the last time Yomi "dreamed" of Dead Master's realm, with Yomi running through the world stained green. Often the chains pursue her, with no end to their linked lengths, and sometimes it seems like she's alone. But she always feels Dead Master's malevolent presence, as if the veiled girl is present in the insubstantial green light beneath Yomi's own feet.

There is a girl at school Yomi admires. Her spirit, energy, confidence, and determination, her cute smile, the kindness she shows a girl who's been lonely most of her life… All these things draw Yomi to her. Her attraction to the girl, her slight crush that grows stronger, helps free her mind from the pall of Dead Master's presence. For a while, Yomi feels whole and happy. The night after she first walks home with Mato, she falls asleep secure in the knowledge that she will not dream of the world of graves. Yet when she wakes up, she has a feeling that she dreamed of something similar but different.

Whatever she did dream, she puts it out of her mind. For the first time in a long time, she has a friend, maybe even a little more than that, and she couldn't be happier. As Dead Master disappears from both her days and her nights, Yomi begins to forget the worries she once had. No longer does she bother to think about what Dead Master wants, or why she wants it. Before long, she doesn't think about Dead Master at all.

One night, however, is all it takes to remind her of the other girl's existence. But she doesn't find herself in the world of graves. Instead, her surroundings are a strange jumble, with checkerboard-patterned surfaces stretching in all directions. With no chains to chase her, Yomi finds she has the time to look around and take in the world. As her gaze sweeps to the horizon and back again, she sees a solitary figure running among the checkerboard structures.

Curious, Yomi walks down from the high stair she has climbed and takes a closer look. Below her, sprinting down a wide alley formed by towers and spires of that same monochrome pattern, she recognizes the figure of Dead Master. The girl looks over her shoulder repeatedly as she runs, her motions tense, a grimace on her face. She comes to a halt briefly, glancing around her to find a route to take, and Yomi gets her first good look at the veiled girl. Her long, dark hair only makes her deathly pale skin stand out all the more, skin which upon her face is partially obscured by the glasses she wears. Her old-fashioned dress is black, too, with green trim in places as well as white frills. On each of her shoes sits a ribbon that complements the outfit. From those features she would appear as a normal human girl, but her hands are large, almost metallic, and clawed, and from her hair, two flat, curved horns rise through the veil.

Dead Master's large scythe is gripped tightly in both hands, and she appears more than prepared to use it. From the way she keeps turning and looking back, it's almost as if… Yomi wonders, is someone or something chasing her? She doesn't know why the veiled girl is in this world that isn't her own, but seeing the expression she wears, she would feel more concerned for the one chasing Dead Master than for Dead Master herself.

And yet, Yomi feels as if she's lost something. This untidy checkerboard world is not what she's used to, and it falls outside her understanding of what the world she sees when she sleeps should be like. Neither she nor Dead Master belongs here, and for one fleeting, half-realized instant, she feels as though she would rather be fleeing Dead Master in the world of green than watching the girl be chased in this strange place.

She's started to run again, and Yomi moves with her to keep her in sight. There are no shadows to hide the girl thanks to the odd, flatly-lit sky, which with its dull color doesn't look like it should be providing any light at all. Yomi still can't see whatever is chasing Dead Master, but for same reason she feels certain something is—some_one_, in fact. Could this be the world of that someone, just as the green world is Dead Master's?

Her questions are not answered, because it is morning once again. Yomi doesn't let it bother her; after all, today is another day she can spend with Mato…

On the way to school, talking and laughing with Mato, she feels happier than she has in years. _Yomi_, the girl calls her, and even though Mato blushes and apologizes, it's Yomi whose heart is set to fluttering. They walk up the street together, and Yomi is already imagining everywhere they'll go together in the future. She may have missed the festival, but they'll make up for it. For a start, every day going to school together—

_No one needs you the much._

—her step falters, and she stumbles a little. When she steadies herself and looks up, Mato is facing away from her. Before Yomi can process what's happening, Mato has run ahead, following the girl from the basketball club, calling something over shoulder that isn't picked up by Yomi's brain.

_No one wants you._

She feels those icy fingers again, pricking the edge of her consciousness. Just like that, Dead Master's presence is back, but that's not the worst of it. The worst is that the voice in her head saying those things doesn't come from only Dead Master.

She is alone in the art room after everyone else has already left, and she inexorably begins to doze. The light of setting sun through the window is like a warm blanket falling over her, and the wood of the table beneath her folded arms looks inviting. At first she is just resting her head, and then her eyes, and then she is asleep. All but alone in the school, there is no one to disturb her.

Despite what she felt earlier, for a second time she finds herself in the midst of the jumbled checkerboard landscape instead of the green world. And that might be a relief to Yomi, but this time something feels different about the world; something feels wrong. Scanning the area around her, Yomi can't see Dead Master, but for some reason that doesn't surprise her.

What does surprise her, though, is when she turns back from her search and finds herself face to face with a girl whose pale features and blue eyes are shadowed by a hood.

This is the one who was chasing Dead Master. Somehow Yomi just knows, the same way she knew Dead Master's name. The girl just looks at her, not moving, and Yomi doesn't feel any menace. The girl doesn't look dangerous… But Dead Master had fled from her, and if Dead Master is scared of her, then Yomi is scared of her, too. She takes a few steps back, watching the hooded girl cautiously. The same thoughts occur to Yomi now as they did the last time she entered the world of checkerboard: She doesn't know why, realizes it doesn't make sense, but she wants this girl to stop chasing Dead Master.

Suddenly it is as if her next step carries her between worlds, and as her surroundings are replaced those of Dead Master's realm, she hears that all-too-familiar rattling sound. She expects the chains, but the moment she has fully materialized in that world, there is Dead Master, extending a claw toward her head. She screams and tumbles backward to the ground, scrambling to get away. Her hand falls on something strange to the touch, and it gives way beneath her weight. She screams again as she looks down and realizes it is a rotted human skull—one in a field of corpses that surrounds them.

Dead Master is closing in, so she quickly gets to her feet and turns to run, struggling to find purchase on the uneven terrain. She is truly in the middle of nowhere now, with nothing but the barren wasteland stretching to the horizon in every direction. There is nowhere she can hide; all that registers to her is a desperation to get away, run, anywhere. And Yomi does, but the chains soar past her and loop all around, cutting her off and coming within a hair's breadth of knocking her down, and with Dead Master right behind her, one stumble would seal her fate. Skulls are crushed beneath her feet, rotting bodies caved in, and the awful sounds they make are like claws in Yomi's gut.

As she runs, all her attention is on the chains, as she tried to avoid becoming ensnared by their greedy coils. Suddenly a touch on her leg brings her gaze to the ground as her flight is abruptly halted, and she screams with the worst shock of fear she has ever known. One of the corpses has closed its hand around her ankle, and it is leering at her.

A tug pulls her off balance, and one more pulls her to the ground, where her face is brought within inches of the corpse's.

She awakens in the art room, crying choked sobs and shaking so badly she collapses to her knees when she tries to stand.

That night she calls Mato, but there is no answer.

She drinks bitter black coffee for the first time in her life, but as the hours tick by she begins to drift closer to sleep.

She grips her own skin so hard she bleeds, but in the end the exhaustion from her own efforts to stay awake overwhelms her.

She falls asleep, and the grinning face of the corpse is waiting for her.

The next day she can't concentrate on anything. Merely getting ready for the day requires more focus than she can muster with Dead Master's emotions beginning to bleed through into her thoughts—rage, malice, hatred, jealousy, disgust—and she leaves for school with her face unwashed, her hair half-brushed, and her wits frayed. Sleepwalking through the entire day and drawing strange looks, some part of Yomi latches on to one last shred of hope, and when the last bell has rung she finds herself standing in the courtyard to meet Mato.

"I'm sorry Yomi, but I can't walk home with you for a while."

_Because you have that other girl._

_Because I'm not your _best_ friend._

_Because no one needs me…_

Yomi can feel Dead Master pounding at the walls of her psyche, as though some last, frail barrier between them is growing steadily thinner. The jealousy that is Dead Master is almost ready to consume the girl that Yomi used to be.

When she falls asleep that night, with her light on, in her school clothes, sitting upright in her chair, the whole field of corpses has risen to stalk her, and the chains are very close. Now when they shoot past her, she feels the rush of wind, and the dead hands that grasp at her are leaving ugly bruises and bloody scratches.

The worst part isn't the deteriorating situation and the fresh horrors it brings. To Yomi, the worst part is that every abomination that grabs at her skin, every black chain that comes close to suffocating her, each one of those only makes her number. As Dead Master gets closer to catching her, Yomi gets closer to giving up and letting her. And her own apathy scares Yomi more than anything. In her growing detachedness, though, she notices something strange: When, for the very first time since coming to the green world, she looks over her shoulder, she sees that Dead Master doesn't look so much like the malevolent demon Yomi knows as she does…desperate.

Awake, Yomi is too submerged in Dead Master to even really think about what things are like when she's asleep, and gradually she loses her ability to think about what's happening right before her eyes. She doesn't even hear what the counselor tells her, because in her mind she is already repeating that very thing to herself over and over again. _No one needs you. _She isn't eating any longer. _No one needs you._ She doesn't talk to anyone anymore. _No one needs you._ If Dead Master was picking at her consciousness before, Yomi thinks now she has broken through.

In the world of green, her lungs burn and her legs ache. She comes to a stop upon a patch of barren earth mercifully free of corpses, hands on her knees, bent double with heavy, gasping breaths. Ahead of her looms the cathedral, as though the world has looped and she has arrived back where she started. The structure looks like a place to hide, but Yomi knows that's not true.

Yomi knows what it would mean to enter the cathedral now. Giving up.

She turns back one more time, and finds Dead Master striding toward her from the mist, chains splayed behind her like tendrils of ink spilling from a writhing central mass. Even though the girl isn't running, Yomi still thinks she looks as though she was recently fleeing something. With the one flicker of thought left to her, Yomi wonders just what the hooded girl was and why Dead Master was running from her.

But it's too late. The bag of sweets falls from her hands as they cease to work properly. Her mouth opens, making incoherent half-sounds at Kagari, who tells her that she's sorry, really, but that she doesn't think she and Yomi are friends anymore. She tells her that she's sorry, again, and then folds her hands awkwardly and waits for Yomi to say something. _Friends._ If Yomi were on the outside looking in, those words of Kagari's night have made her laugh hysterically. Kagari, who controlled her life for years, Kagari who traced a heart on her chest with a needle, Kagari who apologized for everything and swore she'd make it up to Yomi and never leave her, because she loved her? No longer a _friend?_

In the depths of her mind she is entering the cathedral. As she steps inside, walks a few meters amid the dusty columns, across a tiled floor she only now realizes is patterned checkerboard, and collapses, the chains move over her and cinch around her limbs.

_If she were on the outside looking in…_

And then she is.

In the other world the chains pull tight, and in her world Yomi's hands fly to Kagari's throat. Yomi watches herself as she struggles against Kagari, whose flinch prevents Yomi from actually strangling her. The blonde girl is apologizing again and backing away—she must have thought Yomi's sudden movement was a hug. Yomi watches herself watch Kagari leave, and then she tries to take a step forward.

Her leg pushes uselessly against the chain that binds it.

Musty light filters through what remains of the cathedral's large, circular window, which has many missing panels. It falls upon Yomi, who is slumped forward, held aloft by the chains which have pulled her limbs up and apart.

She watches herself begin to climb the stairs to her room, and instinctively reaches for the banister, but her arm is held firmly in place by its own coil of chains.

From then on Yomi watches a girl who isn't her, living her life—in a mockery of it, anyway. Yomi is much too dead inside to care, but the girl's fake smiles to the other students would have made the old Yomi sick. When she isn't being so horribly, awfully _normal_, the girl is a monster. She destroys everything in Yomi's room, terrifying her mother, and when she runs out of objects to damage, she begins to destroy herself. The pain doesn't reach Yomi.

Dead Master stands before the captive Yomi in the cathedral, and the chains shift her from her spread-eagled position to a cocoon of their metallic links. Bound in thick chains at Dead Master's feet, she looks up at the veiled girl. Now that Dead Master finally has her, Yomi wonders without real interest, what will she do with her? Yomi no longer cares, but it's a question all the same.

In the real world, Yomi watches as her life deteriorates to nothingness. Before long, the girl who isn't her retreats into a shell of her own, seeming to lose even the vitality to injure herself. Yomi realizes that since the girl is still her, some part of her, her diminishing life is a sign that Yomi is almost gone from that world entirely. Soon she will _be_ just a shell, but as the other girl huddles in a bedsheet and shuts out everything, Yomi finds she doesn't care about even that.

_I want…nothing._

It's as though Dead Master can't think of anything to do having finally caught Yomi. From the look on her face and her restless movements, it's clear she doesn't want to keep Yomi immobile before her like some kind of trophy, but she isn't doing anything else. Yomi looks closer at the silent girl, and suddenly it strikes her how sad Dead Master looks. Sadness isn't an emotion she can remember seeing in Dead Master before, but now it is written plainly in her emerald eyes.

Yomi senses a flicker of will stirring in her chest. A spark ignites there, and for the first time since her nightmare in the art room, she feels the desire to _do_ something returning to her. The desire grows stronger, and with it comes clarity to her thoughts, like the fog of the green world slowly parting.

The chains loosen. Before long, Yomi feels like her old self. The chains relax.

_I want…_

As Yomi sits up, Dead Master freezes. Yomi stands and faces the girl, looking her directly in the eye, and extends her hand. In a mirror to Yomi's second encounter with the girl, Dead Master's hand immediately flies to strike her, but this time Yomi stops the powerful blow with just her fingertips. She takes the hand gently in her own, weaving their fingers together. Dead Master stares at her with fury and pure shock swirled together in her face, along with a hint of fear.

Always so angry, as if she's been hurt; always so desperate, as if she's being hunted… Yomi finally understands Dead Master. What's more, she understands what Dead Master needs, which is so much more important than what she wants.

_I want to help you._

Dead Master jerks her hand free and back away, stumbling slightly in her hurry, and summons the chains to encircle Yomi again. But they won't do as she commands, and Yomi walks straight through.

_I'm not afraid anymore._

Whoever she is, however she came to exist, Dead Master is the bad part of Yomi, or perhaps Yomi is the good part of her. But that doesn't have to be the way it works. What Yomi understands now is just how closely connected she and the veiled girl are, and how that means that she couldn't possibly run away from Dead Master even if she wanted to.

Leaping back, soaring away from Yomi, Dead Master thrusts her scythe into the air. At that movement, the floors bursts open, and from the earth beneath crawls her army of the damned. The corpses raise weapons and block Yomi's path, but her stride doesn't falter. They part before her as if pushed aside by an invisible force, and their lunges stop short of her unflinching form.

_I want Dead Master._

Because it's obvious what Yomi should do. She may not want it, but this girl needs Yomi's help, and that's exactly what she's going to get. It isn't fondness she feels for Dead Master, but she does care, does want to make it all better, does want to see her without all that anger and jealousy and malice. What she feels is love.

She stands before the veiled girl and extends her hand for a third time, eyes locked with Dead Master's. "You don't have to be afraid, either," she says. "We can take care of everything together."

Dead Master looks at her for another fleeting moment, revulsion etched in the sharp lines of her face, but then her look of anger gives way as she falls to her knees. Yomi kneels as well, and wraps the other girl's slumped frame in a hug, her arms rustling the fabric of the dress. She whispers in Dead Master's ear, sweet and soothing, and after a minute has passes she realizes the girl is asleep. So she lets her veiled head rest on her lap, and softly strokes her hair. The corpses are gone and the chains are still… Yomi measures time only by the sound of Dead Master's breathing.

When Dead Master stirs, almost waking, Yomi brushes a light kiss over her lips and lets her slumber on.

To herself, Yomi makes a promise. Something has hurt Dead Master badly, and has been for a long time. Yomi doesn't know if it was the hooded girl, isolation in this wasteland, or even the ugly emotions bottled up inside Yomi herself for so many years. But she does know that she won't let Dead Master be hurt again. If the hooded girl returns, Yomi will protect Dead Master. If Dead Master is lonely, Yomi will stay with her. And awake, Yomi won't ever be jealous again.

In one world, Yomi wakes up. Around her are the tattered remains of her room, the challenge of pulling a ruined life back together, and the promise of returning to a girl in another world who needs her.

When Yomi sleeps, she doesn't dread the green world for its darkness, tombs, and chains. She longs for it, with its caresses, kisses, and embraces from the girl who needs her, and the girl Yomi wants, her Dead Master.

* * *

><p>AN: If this isn't too tasteless...

...

... ...

I guess Yomi is just attracted to abusive women


	5. Aka, Part Two

I've had this done for a while, but was slow typing it up (yes, I handwrite my stories). Hopefully I can get a lot of work done on the next chapter(s) between a couple plane rides.

* * *

><p>Black Gold Saw is frustrating.<p>

Saya awakens not to pale sunlight coming through the window of her childhood room, but to the sound of a car alarm outside her apartment. Everything is wrong, not least of all the fact that with this little sleep, she'll be fighting to stay awake during the day's counseling sessions.

It's an hour before her alarm will go off, and she knows she won't be able to get any more rest, but all the same she wants to just curl up and forget the morning. Finally she throws off the covers with a scowl and gets out of bed. _Everything _is wrong. She'd been dreaming—actually dreaming—of the night she first kissed Gold Saw, all those years ago… Of course, it would be a dream like that that gets interrupted by a car alarm, instead of one of the others. Saya feels hollow.

If she won't be loyal in the present, can't Gold Saw at least not torment her from the past? Painful recollections like this are all Saya needs added to her list of stresses.

She does her best to shake it off, occupying herself with getting ready for the day—it's too early, but anything to take her mind off Gold Saw is good. She has to focus, because today is another day for the supremely important task of easing those girls' suffering. Sometimes it's as simple as having a receptive ear, or a shoulder to cry on; sometimes all it takes is conversation and advice. Saya is very good at those things. But sometimes the pain goes deeper, and Saya never misses it. Then things become more complicated, but… It's necessary to help them. It's just like she told Gold Saw all those years ago. Helping people, like she said she would. Like she told Gold Saw…

"Damn it!" Her hand flies of its own accord and hits the wall, palm flat, with a loud slam. Immediately she regrets the lapse. She takes deep, steadying breaths to help calm herself, and finishes getting dressed. Today requires special care, because she has a feeling the Kuroi girl will be coming to see her again.

Black Gold Saw is distant.

Now, Saya puts Gold Saw out of her mind completely on her way to the school, but often she would take such opportunities to talk to the woman. She asked questions, or talked about her day, in what she knew full well were pale imitations of how things used to be between them. She would ask, for example, about the state of the other world.

But that was disingenuous. Saya has long since learned to keep her mind's eye in that world, and these days she knows it as well as Gold Saw. Apart from that, she frequently enters it herself—sometimes alone, sometimes with Gold Saw as her avatar—which gives her firsthand experience of the changes she asks about. All her other questions similarly come to nothing. Saya doesn't expect verbal answers, but despite herself, she misses the unspoken bond she and Gold Saw used to share which rendered words unnecessary. The connection still exists, but it's become so superficial, as if it has changed to suit the new, all-too-practical purposes Saya now uses it for.

That's something she does as walks into the school building that morning, closing her eyes briefly and letting her mind drift to another world. Satisfied that _she _hasn't left her territory, and reassured that there have been no encroachments into Gold Saw's, she continues on her way to the counseling office.

Black Gold Saw is different now.

Back then, Saya used to think they looked so much alike. It helped strengthen that connection, when everything was the same, everything matched. But now when Saya looks at Gold Saw, she wonders how she could have ever thought that.

Letting her mind drift too far in the dreary afternoon, she finds herself in the world of gray, opposite Gold Saw. The moment she sees the woman with her too-long hair, her face that has stayed too young and innocent, Saya is angry. "I don't need you here," she says. "Go away." Gold Saw doesn't move, doesn't say a word. "Did you hear me?" Saya demands.

The look in Gold Saw's eyes says plainly that it is Saya who's come to her, and not the other way around, but Saya doesn't care. It's too painful to be near this girl who is nothing like her. This girl who still looks like a teenager while Saya is grown up. This girl whose aims are different, whose thoughts are different, whose heart grows steadily further from Saya's reach. She doesn't want to just stand there and shout at Gold Saw, but she can't stand being close to her, either.

For the first time since she met Gold Saw, days and nights are passing where she doesn't see the other woman at all.

Black Gold Saw is ruining everything.

When she realizes Gold Saw has interfered with her plans again, she feels sick rather than angry. Sometimes she and Gold Saw are in perfect synch, as if they've never disagreed on a single thing in their lives, as if they share one mind. Sometimes, when Gold Saw allows it, that's exactly what they do. But Gold Saw isn't always just Saya's avatar, and sometimes when she isn't she does the exact opposite of what Saya wants.

For years now, Saya has been relying on careful manipulation of the world of colors and its residents. She needs to know their movements, understand what they want, and influence them towards her own ends, which usually means death. Saya would rather not have Gold Saw be an executioner, and having the other beings destroy each other is an effective substitute. With them laid to rest, their human counterparts are free from their suffering, and the girls of that world are themselves free from their painful, kill-or-be-killed existences.

But that manipulation relies on the help of Gold Saw, and that's something Saya can't count on any longer. Now Gold Saw will often simply refuse to act, and Saya's current plan will collapse like a house of cards. Sometimes the woman won't even acknowledge Saya's attempts to reach her, as though she's shut herself away in some part of the other world where Saya can't find her (by all rights impossible; Saya has seen every corner of that world). All this without a word of explanation, without any reason.

No matter how distant they've grown, their hearts were one once, and it hurts Saya every time Gold Saw is against her. But she can't help her anger at the other woman, and eventually it boils over.

"Are you happy?" she shouts at Gold Saw. "Now it'll take me another week to lure that one out."

She receives no answer.

"Why?" Standing there in that ugly gray world, it feels like her very words are snatched away by the wind. "Why do you keep doing this? Why don't you just _talk_ to me?"

Again Gold Saw doesn't so much as blink.

Saya takes deep, steadying breaths. When she speaks again, her voice is more level. "You know what I'm trying to do, don't you? You remember what this world used to be like." She indicates the entire wasteland. "It was a mercy that eventually they almost all killed each other off. Existence in this world is pain—you're lucky to be the exception to that. I have to make sure no others are ever born into this world because of suffering in mine, and that's why I have my job." There is a pause. "But you know what the other problem is."

Gold Saw still looks impassive. Saya speaks calmly, slowly, as if she's explaining to a child. "The ones who survived have become too powerful. They'll destroy each other, too, but not before they've caused irreparable damage to the girls they coexist with. As long as they exist, as long as _anyone _exists here, it will signify nothing but pain and suffering and death. Putting them to rest is the only way this world will ever have peace, and the only way to help those girls." Silence. "This is just what I told you I'd do with my life! Helping people! I want to make those girls' lives better, and you…" She lets herself trail off, thinks about starting again. Should she be harsh, and reiterate that everyone in the other world needs to die? Or is that attitude what's causing Gold Saw to balk? Saya doesn't know what to do.

Still, Gold Saw gives no indication whether Saya's words have gotten through to her. Normally Saya would give up at this point and withdraw to her own world, but this time the memory of their first kiss is too strong in her mind. It makes her weak with longing for Gold Saw to acknowledge her again, but it exacerbates her anger, too. She tries one more time. "Please, Gold Saw. Answer me. Why don't you want to help me?" She finds the other questions, the ones in her heart to which she really wants the answers, rising unbidden to her lips. "Why are you so different?" With a last swing of her emotions, Saya is shouting again, and finally she feels it torn from within her: "Why don't you love me?"

The echoes of that question fade into the gray landscape, and Saya's consciousness slips from that world back to her office.

Black Gold Saw is confusing.

Saya realizes something has changed after that—after her outburst which finally caused her to shout the question she's wanted to demand of Gold Saw all along. She is still concerned with the situation developing around the Kuroi girl—and Takanashi, too—but she tries to balance that with attempts to seek out Gold Saw, who is proving elusive. Saya wants to find her, to apologize to her, to do _something_; Saya isn't sure what. She's afraid she has damaged their fragile relationship even further, and if nothing else, being cut off from Gold Saw means she has lost her eyes and ears in the world of colors…

No, that's not right. She shouldn't think of Gold Saw like a tool. Perhaps that's why the other woman has been so distant? Whatever the reason, if it's her fault and not because of some mysterious change in Gold Saw, then Saya swears she'll make up for it.

That said, the state of things with Kuroi is getting worse and worse, and it will require Saya's undivided attention very soon. She's been carefully luring _that_ one, that most dangerous of the other world's inhabitants, and without Gold Saw's help she could lose her for good. Now a plan is emerging to take care of both that girl and the other one, the one connected to Takanashi, at once… All this really means is that she must find Gold Saw soon, both to make things right and to ensure the woman will be ready and willing to help her. Saya tries to convince herself that she considers the former more important, even as she wills herself to appear in the gray world and begins to search. Gold Saw's consciousness is beyond her reach (though, unlike at other times, she is somewhere Saya can sense her), so her search is physical rather than mental. All the same, it doesn't take Saya long to find her.

She sees Gold Saw standing atop the ruins of some stone structure, facing away from her. She is about to call out to the woman when she notices something strange. Gold Saw has in her hand an oddly shaped object, vaguely round, with a handle and what looks like a spout. Slowly she raises it and, tilting the spout forward, releases a light shower of droplets of clear…something. The specks gently drift and touch down, where they darken the dusty earth beneath them.

Saya moves closer, keeping herself hidden behind the columns and arches that surround the clearing Gold Saw faces. The red-eyed woman is watching the damp ground intently, so Saya does, too. As she watches, the surface begins to shift with subtle ripples; then it loses form entirely as several dark shapes rise from it. Indistinct at first, the shapes writhe and grow and finally settle into the silhouettes of cloaked figures whose pale faces all turn immediately to Gold Saw.

Their appearance shocks Saya. They look just like the budding manifestations of grief that used to inhabit the world of colors in the thousands—the ones whose endless, instinct-driven fighting had made the world a living hell. Worse, they were what eventually became the fully developed, much more dangerous entities Saya is currently struggling to eliminate. And Gold Saw is creating more of them? It can't be.

The hooded girls don't look threatening at the moment. They huddle together, trembling slightly, their impossibly wide eyes fixed on Gold Saw. Still trying to come to grips with the situation, Saya watches to see what the woman will do. That, at first, is nothing. Gold Saw simply looks at the beings she's brought forth, and they similarly do nothing but stare back at her. Finally, Gold Saw takes a step forward atop her raised dais; the shadowy girls flinch, but Gold Saw only lifts the container she holds and lets a few more drops trickle out. Immediately, several more of the small figures rise from the earth.

Saya can't stand and watch any longer. "What are you doing?" she shouts, striding out from behind the pillar concealing her. Gold Saw whirls to face her, the smile Saya only now realizes has been on her face fading—a _smile?_—and the widening of her eyes reveals just how startled she is. The hooded figures recoil completely, and inch away from Saya.

"How—" Saya begins, but her voices fades as the earth before her starts to shift. A solitary drop of the clear liquid, escaped from the container when Gold Saw turned, has landed just in front of her, and in that spot she watches another of the cloaked girls appear.

Before Saya can do anything, the girl opens her—its?—mouth as if in a scream, though no sound comes out, and tumbles over backward. Staring at her with fearful eyes, it scrambles backward on nascent hands and feet, backing up until its back is pressed against the stone Gold Saw stands on. Gold Saw looks at the girl for a moment, then steps down and gently places a hand on its shoulder. It flinches, but doesn't try to get away.

Once the girl is calmed, Gold Saw looks up at Saya. Saya can see worry in those brilliantly red eyes—one emotion more than she can remember seeing in years—and defiance, too. She's not sure where to start, but once she does, the words pour out of her.

"Is this what you've been doing all this time? Growing more of these…things?" She glances briefly at the group of them, and the solitary one now peeking out from behind Gold Saw's legs. "I can't believe this. Don't you remember? Don't you _think?_

"You should know better than I do what existence is for them. They fight. They kill each other. Existence here is _death_. That's all it can be!" Saya's gaze searches Gold Saw's face. "Listen to me. I miss you. I want you to be with me, I want to be with you. I came here to apologize and I don't just want your help; I want you! Please, stop doing this and come with me." She looks for any sign that Gold Saw is heeding her words, but there is none. Angry, she levels her finger at the hooded figure behind Gold Saw. "Maybe you'll listen to me when that girl you're protecting ends up dead at your feet, and it's the others who killed her!"

Gold Saw stiffens. She takes one threatening step in Saya's direction, but stops immediately, her expression flickering. Saya doesn't flinch. "I never wanted to just use you, Black Gold Saw. But if you can't see how what you're doing is causing suffering, then that's exactly what's going to happen." Her words have become cold, hard, and bitter. "I'll use you to kill any of the beings in this world I need to…including these ones."

She turns to leave, more symbolic than anything, but before she has taken three steps, Gold Saw appears from the shadow of a large column ahead of her. It's the same seamless transition from place to place that lets Gold Saw sink into the ground, and Saya has long since stopped being startled by it. What does surprise her, though, is when the raven-haired woman extends her hand, palm up, to Saya. Gold Saw meets her eyes, and suddenly Saya can see such warmth in their depths that she almost reaches out and takes the hand.

"No," she says, almost to herself, and she abruptly turns away. She can tell what Gold Saw is offering isn't agreement to what she just said; it's something else, and Saya has no interest in it.

She resurfaces to wakefulness, and she has finally hardened her heart to the possibility that her relationship with Gold Saw might be damaged beyond repair.

Or, that's what she tells herself.

Black Gold Saw is never completely gone.

Those next days, it is harder than ever before to distance her thoughts from the other world. She needs to remain completely focused, because the two souls she's been trying so hard to manipulate are soon to meet, and that situation alone is creating enough inter-dimensional tension to cause her stress. But that's not the only thing weighing on Saya's mind.

She does her best to ignore it, tells herself she can't sense it, tries to pretend it isn't affecting her. Now is the absolute worst time for Gold Saw to decide to give her what she's wanted for so long.

It's Gold Saw who fills every corner of her waking thoughts, just like with the connection they shared when Saya was younger, if not stronger than it. It's just what Saya had hoped for, but now it's a distraction. Now, of all times, _now_ Gold Saw wants to reach her, _now_ she wants to tell her side of the story. It's too late for that, and Saya tries to shut her out.

But when she focuses on blocking out Gold Saw's emotions, the woman comes to her a different way, as though her presence is bleeding through Saya's mental armor. Saya's head is filled with vivid images of long dark hair, a pointed chin, two red ringed eyes, making it impossible to concentrate on her counseling or the world of colors. So next she tries to block those out.

Once the mental images of Gold Saw subside, they are replaced by something even worse: memories. Saya is back where she started when she woke up that too-early morning. Instead of responding to a student's troubles, she's reliving the first time she and Black Gold Saw touched. Instead of keeping track of _that_ girl in the other world, she's recalling how it felt when realized Gold Saw was putting down her sword every time they met. She remembers their first kiss. She even remembers something she has forgotten since the night it happened; she remembers falling and almost losing consciousness before Gold Saw wrapped her in strong arms and caught her…

At first, she is convinced there are no cracks in her hardened heart. Saya is sure she can, and should, shut out Gold Saw.

That's until she realizes the truth about why Gold Saw's presence is coming to her so strongly.

She _has _been kidding herself about the renewed connection with Gold Saw, and it only takes one more night, one more memory, to make her realize that.

What Saya remembers is the very first day she met Black Gold Saw, and the moment they began to share one mind. That was the moment that convinced her they should share one heart, too, because there was something Gold Saw did that sunsoaked evening that contradicted the cold attitude Saya would later see as she tried to get closer to the woman. And that was to grant Saya that mutual connection she feels now.

Now, Saya realizes, or perhaps remembers, that the connection is two-way. It only exists if both of them want it to. And that means…

For the third time, she finds Gold Saw in the gray wasteland, but this time she hasn't gone there with the intention of convincing the other woman of anything, or trying to get her to do something, or act a certain way. Instead, she does what she failed to do the last time. She says, "I'm sorry." And then she is silent.

Gold Saw smiles.

With their gazes locked, Saya finally understands what she has seen in Gold Saw's eyes for so long. A simple truth that never even occurred to Saya as a possibility, never struck her she should listen to Gold Saw for: _You aren't always right._

Gold Saw is again holding her hand out to Saya, and Saya walks to her and takes it, entwining their fingers.

The world blurs around them, and Saya suddenly finds herself standing in a different part of the wasteland, hand still grasping Gold Saw's. Ahead of them she sees the cloaked girls, dozens of them now, and they no longer seem so shadowy. Their silhouettes are more defined, their limbs more apparent. One of them has a distinct face, tinted irises, and short, dark red hair, and it's that one Gold Saw approaches with a look nearing delight.

As they move closer, Saya can see that the other girls are still clinging to one another; it doesn't seem like it's because they're afraid, but rather because they've grown accustomed to it.

The red-haired girl, though, is shaking more than the others ever did. A rattly, knocking sound accompanies the motion, as though she were made of wood. Slowly Gold Saw bends down and offers her free hand to the girl.

"You want to…" Saya whispers, having trouble finding her voice. "…repopulate?" Gold Saw's eyes are fixed on the girl, but she nods slightly. "You want to start over… make this world a place where these girls can live and not fight or suffer?" She doesn't need to ask these questions, nor is she, really. The words come to her straight from Gold Saw, and she repeats them in wonder.

"_That_ girl is the biggest threat… You've tried to keep her away, even—" Her voice breaks. "Even while you were trying to help me, too? I've been…" Tears choke these words, which don't come from Gold Saw but from Saya herself. "I've been making everything worse, haven't I? Except for _her_, the others never would have come anywhere near here, but now that I've interfered, they're putting all these girls in danger."

Gold Saw looks up at her. She never speaks, aloud or in thoughts, but as always Saya can see what she feels written in her red irises. She feels responsible, because it was her bitter, preemptive attack that caused _her_ to leave her realm in the first place, before Saya ever decided to try and rid the other world of her. If anything, Saya's plan had to be put in motion _because_ Gold Saw disturbed the uneasy peace existing since that girl thought she'd already killed everyone there was to kill.

"That's not true!" Saya exclaims vehemently. "It was my fault—"

Gold Saw reaches out and touches Saya's cheek with the back of her hand, hushing her. Saya takes a shuddering breath, feeling butterflies in her stomach at the caress, and starts again. "Now we need to do something about it. That girl won't stop hunting you, and she won't stop following the other one. Maybe it's best to continue as I planned, but now I'll make sure these girls are safe." With another nod, Gold Saw again turns and reaches out to the shaking girl, who still looks frightened.

Saya goes on. "As long as _she_ doesn't come here, they—" She stops when she realizes the ground beneath her feet is shaking. The tremors get worse, and the hooded figures all slowly turn and look upward, to something only they can see. "Coming," they say, repeating it over and over. "Coming…"

Suddenly one of the stone pillars begins to split apart, blinding light shining through the cracks; over the shaking a harsh, repetitive noise is now audible, like a clank mixed with an explosion. Saya looks at Gold Saw to find the woman looking back at her with real fear in her eyes. Then Gold Saw reaches out and pushes Saya, knocking her over and sending her tumbling back to her office in the school.

The Takanashi girl is in the middle of saying something, but Saya doesn't hear it as suddenly everything freezes. Gold Saw might have pushed her mind back to this world, but she cannot move her mind's eye, and in it she watches as the bodies of the hooded girls are send flying by lethal blasts of cannon fire. One by one they are targeted, and one by one they are killed. Saya feels Gold Saw's fury, but silently begs the other woman not to do anything, despite her own sick horror at feeling the innocent lives extinguished, one at a time, with mechanical efficiency.

Takanashi's voice again doesn't reach Saya when she asks if she's all right. She remains frozen as the massacre continues, until, finally, there is only one left. Then, with the flash of a blade there are none, and Saya feels the hot tears streaming down her cheeks. Gold Saw has slipped away, but even that is little comfort to either of them understanding how much was lost in those few seconds.

Saya had never thought the monster would kill the undeveloped beings when Gold Saw was present as an alternative target. She would have expected a short clash—enough to fray her nerves, with Gold Saw at such risk—and then for her to be drawn away from the gray world. She couldn't have imagined this.

When she's finally able to reach Gold Saw later that day, she isn't sure what to say. She apologizes again, but can't say for what. So they just sit together in silence, each other's embrace the only comfort either can have.

Black Gold Saw is Saya's.

Finally, it ends, leaving the girl's bright blue flame burning while her opponent lies in a pool of her own green blood. As one, Saya and Black Gold Saw move to attack the weakened girl and destroy her once and for all, but they are stopped by a glint of red light that couldn't, shouldn't be there, alighting in once-blue eyes that now turn purple. And all hell breaks loose.

Immediately, Saya's calculating mind races through their options. She dashes without hesitation—she and Gold Saw—and swings her great sword at the awakened soul, hoping she can catch it off guard in its first moments. The strike lands, but it isn't nearly enough to kill, and at that instant Saya realizes they will be fighting for their lives.

She and Black Gold Saw work in perfect unison, but it's no use. As the battle progresses, they sustain worse and worse injuries, and not even the transition to the gray world helps them. Gold Saw holds some power over that world, enough to trap the monster briefly, but it doesn't matter. She breaks free, and their strength is too far diminished to dodge her next attack. Saya wills herself to be the closest to, the furthest within Gold Saw she has ever been, and braces for the end.

Suddenly she finds herself lying on the dusty gray earth, in her own body, looking at Gold Saw and the other girl about to extinguish her life. She realizes what Gold Saw has done. She doesn't have time to scream.

Saya is Black Gold Saw's.

But she does have time to will herself through the ground, and Gold Saw along with her.

They descend, in free fall, into a void of darkness. Soon flashes of color come to life around them, every hue in the spectrum. Saya has only a distant childhood memory to tell her that there is a destination waiting for them at the end of this drop, and has no idea where it is they're going. But if what she thinks she remembers is correct, it's somewhere they'll finally, truly be safe.

A red glow begins to wash out all the other colors. Saya drifts closer to Gold Saw, and they embrace tightly just as the glow flares and swallows them whole.

. . .

Her vision clear, Saya looks up, and beholds a dark landscape, a red sky. The terrain is remarkably uneven, curving, rising, falling, even twisting. Mountains rest beside deep gorges which border…rivers? Saya realizes that the ground beneath her, though an almost volcanic color, is soft, and in fact seems to be covered with something like grass. There are crimson-tinted clouds in the sky and wind through their hair. Strange topography aside, it is a color-shifted version of something completely pleasant, completely normal. Even the red of the sky isn't more than a soft tint.

This is the one place in the world of colors Saya has never seen. Black Gold Saw's home.

For some reason Saya is sure they won't be followed. She lies down beside Gold Saw, who looks at her silently. They can both sense what's happening in the worlds above them, and even though they know it isn't over, they are content to stay where they are until they're needed.

"Those girls," Saya says. "We can bring them back. I know we can."

Gold Saw's silent agreement is as clear to Saya as the light touch the woman brushes over her hand before grasping it. Saya turns to face her and sees that Gold Saw is smiling at her. "Saw," she says, and that's it. She likes the way it sounds.

"I've made a lot of mistakes," she begins, but Gold Saw silences her with a kiss. Saya melts into it; she feels overjoyed to know that more than just sharing one mind again, she and Gold Saw share one heart, too. She feels the weariness from a long struggle to uphold her promises, to keep this world safe and to ease burdens of suffering, some of her methods and actions right and some not… Only that weariness stops her from seeking more than a kiss.

Saya presses herself very close to Gold Saw, lying on her side, until the other woman turns to her side as well. Saya closes the gap, and now their bodies fit together like two pieces of a puzzle, Saya's chest against Gold Saw's back, her knees against the back of the pale woman's. Wrapping her arms tightly around Gold Saw's slender, strong frame, letting her face rest against the small of her back, Saya closes her eyes.

"Thank you for what you did…but I'd never let you leave me like that," she murmurs, and Gold Saw just smiles. "Anywhere you go, I'm going too."

They fall asleep together, under the light of the red sky.


	6. Orenji, Part Two

I'm actually happy with the length this chapter ended up being. I'm not so sure about the chapter itself, but...

All warm fuzzies have officially ceased as of this chapter. Bring your steel heart to the next one and be prepared.

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><p>Strength screams as the girl is seized by the purple demon. From her half-in, half-out position between worlds, she can do nothing but watch as the demon strikes Yuu over and over, finally hurling her at the nearest shifting wall. Yuu flips and regains her balance, the structure of cubes moving to accommodate her landing, but her adversary is already closing in. The purple demon's next shot engulfs Yuu and her surroundings in violet flame.<p>

With rising panic, Strength tries to think of what she can do. She finally understands Yuu, finally realizes just how many reasons she has to love the other girl, and now this monster is coming between them? This shouldn't be Yuu's burden in the first place. She shouldn't even be in that world. All along, it should have been Strength who fought, who had to fear that demon, while Yuu enjoyed a life that was just beginning to turn around…the life she gave up for Strength.

Yuu had been winning her duel with the monster, a duel in the heat and light and flames of the deepest layer of the world governed by color; even when she was arguing with Strength, she held the upper hand. But now Strength can feel her faltering, and the pain her foe is inflicting on her makes Strength want to cry. Why is Yuu's strength failing her?

Years ago, she would have known exactly why. Over a decade before, she and Yuu had grown to know every corner of each other's minds—though Strength has only recently realized how well Yuu knew hers—and there were no secrets, nothing one could possibly keep from the other. But then Yuu forced Strength to switch places with her, and completely closed off the connection existing between them. Since then, time has only separated them even further.

Now Strength can feel that connection returning, but she is still struggling to understand it. Yuu's emotions are a confused jumble, overwhelming Strength on top of her own panic and fear. Moments before, she had felt such joy as she'd never known, joy at realizing how much Yuu cared about her, but now icy terror grips her. Terror for Yuu's life, terror that she might be unable to help as the girl is snatched from her.

Amid the flames, Yuu has disengaged form the purple demon and is slowly approaching it from behind. Finally she springs forward, smashing her mechanized fist into the back of its head; the soulless girl is knocked down and skids along the ground, but even as she falls, her weapon comes up in an arc and bats Yuu away as she tries to follow. With both recoiling, the blocks' structure shifts again, raising a wall between them to shield Yuu. As soon as it's regained its balance, the purple demon begins shelling the wall of cubes. The sounds layer over the roar of the flames, the cacophony of rumbles and bangs from the cubes, creating an even more hellish combination of noises.

"Yuu!" Strength shouts to her. "What's wrong?" Her words reach Yuu across the vast gulf between worlds. "Don't let her hurt you anymore!"

"I'm not letting her!" Yuu's voice sounds slightly panicked. "Something's wrong! I can't…" She trails off, looking up, and a second later jumps away with a shout as the purple demon almost lands on top of her. They struggle back and forth before Yuu pulls away, and immediately the purple demon unleashes yet another hail of bullets.

"Go away, Strength!" Yuu shouts even as the projectiles slam into her. "There's nothing you can do here. Go away!"

Strength shakes her head violently, although Yuu cannot see her. "I won't leave you! You've been alone all this time, and it's not right!"

"It's not right…?" Yuu repeats. Suddenly she sounds frightened.

"For a while I pretended it made things better to just try and make that world safer for you," Strength continues. "But I never accepted you being in that place. I don't accept it! We—"

"It's you," says Yuu abruptly, and then she shouts it. "It's you! You're making me weaker!" As she's speaking, the purple demon closes in.

Strength freezes. "What do you mean?"

"I can't focus with you in my head! I can't — damn it!" She breaks off, striking a hammer blow to her foe's head, but it doesn't slow. Yuu's cry as the demon sinks its fist into her midsection makes Strength flinch.

_Is it true?_ Horror gnaws her insides at Yuu's words. Their renewed connection is making it difficult for Strength to focus; could it be affecting Yuu as well? For a moment Strength is torn. She doesn't want to leave Yuu alone, but she could never forgive herself if she caused Yuu to be hurt.

"You have to get out of my head!" Yuu is shouting while she trades blows with the demon. "You have to leave!"

Strength is on the verge of withdrawing from the world of colors when she realizes something isn't right. She senses the purple demon, its presence burning like a violent fire, and she can feel it growing stronger. It's feeding on its host, and it doesn't seem like Mato has much time left…and that means Yuu doesn't, either. It's not that Yuu is getting weaker, it's just that she could never hope in the first place to defeat the raw power that is the demon.

All that matters is helping Yuu. There must be something she can do, something… Strength racks her brains. Yuu would never let Strength take her place, and if Strength returned to the other world anyway, there wouldn't be anything her human form could do against the purple demon. What, then?

Slowly she comes to realize what she must do. If Yuu won't come back to reality of her own accord…

"What are you doing?" The panic in Yuu's voice is rising. She catches the demon's arm an instant before it strikes her and heaves the enemy into a wall. "Leave!" Already the violet-eyed monster has recovered and is firing at her. "If you don't leave, I'm going to die! Don't you care about me? Do you want me to—"

"Yuu," says Strength quietly. "She's too strong."

"Wh-what?" stammers Yuu.

"You can't lie to me. It won't affect you whether I stay or go." Strength begins to block out the echoes of heat and light reaching her from the other world, and focuses only on Yuu. She tries not to cry. "You can't beat her."

"Why are—" Yuu begins, but it's Strength's turn to interrupt her. "Don't worry," she says, and she tries to keep her voice steady. "Don't worry, Yuu. I won't let her hurt you.

"Yuu…" she says. "Let's switch."

There is a moment of stunned silence. Yuu's growing anger begins to make the insubstantial gray space Strength perceives around herself turn violent and stormy. She tries to speak, but is cut off by Yuu's shout. "Never! I'd rather die right now! I'll never face reality; I won't do it!"

"You belong in this world, Yuu." Now Strength blocks out her own surroundings, the soft grass, the peaceful river, the almost-set sun. "And I belong in that one."

"Forget where we _belong!_ I'm here now, and I don't want to go back!" Yuu is slow to react as her opponent drives at her. "Things are"—she dodges one strike—"how they are—uunh!" An uppercut catches her in the jaw, and she lands heavily on her back.

Strength can see through Yuu's protests as easily as she can hear her voice. Her heart swells with love at Yuu's true reason, to make sure Strength keeps the life she gave her a decade ago, but at the same time she's worried Yuu might have really convinced herself going back would bring her pain. "Saya is there! Mato is there! You'll have friends, you'll have people who love you! You can go to a school where nobody is cruel to you!"

Yuu catches the demon's weapon in both hands from the ground and redirects its lunge off to one side. "Even…" Her voice falters. "Even if that's true, I don't deserve a life like that! I just run from my problems, right?"

"Wrong!" shouts Strength, on the verge of crying now. "You deserve everything! You gave me a life, you gave me the chance to experience so many good things… Walking home with your best friend… Talking and laughing and eating with people who care about you… Now I want you to have it all back!"

Again Yuu has taken cover behind a rise of cubes. "What…" she says quietly, "are you talking about?"

"You don't have to pretend anymore." One world fading slowly around her, Strength prepares to transport herself to another. "I know what you did for me."

"It's not true! It had nothing to do with you! _I_ wanted—" Yuu breaks off. "It's not true. But it doesn't matter, because I'll never let you change places with me!" She laughs shakily, with a touch of hysteria. "I won't ever go back!" She cautiously edges around another wall, away from the purple demon, which is stalking among the towers and pits of the ever-changing structure. "I asked you never to talk to me again. I asked you. You broke your promise!" Her shouted accusations sound childish.

Strength is silent for a moment. "I'd do anything for you, Yuu," she says softly. "But that doesn't mean I'll do whatever you want." And she steps into the orange world.

Yuu screams. "What are you doing? Stop it! Strength, stop!"

Far below, so far down that even the sea of flames is suspended above her, Strength walks across dry, cracked earth. She ignores Yuu's panicked shouting. "I won't let that girl kill you." Her voice doesn't waver now. "One way or another, you're going back."

"Don't do this!" Yuu pleads with her. The purple demon has sighted her and is walking her way, but she doesn't pay any heed. "I don't want..." Finally, her resolve crumbles. "I don't want you to come back here! I want you to be happy! I want you to have all those things you said! Don't throw that away, not for me…"

"It's mine," says Strength, "because you gave it to me. So it's mine to give back." Before her is an enormous pit, no more than a hole in the surface of reality, and Strength knows where it leads: oblivion. There simply isn't any lower to go in the world of colors, and this chasm is a conduit to the negation of existence. "When I die"—she hears Yuu's screams grow louder at those words—"you'll leave this world for good…and everything will be all right again." Strength closes her eyes. "Goodbye, Yuu."

"_No!_" Even as Strength steps forward and drops into the pit, Yuu's cry tears through her, and then suddenly it is as if the girl is falling alongside her. "You can't do this to me," she says, her words no longer just an echo reaching Strength. Yuu is still standing frozen high above as the monster draws close, but she is somehow reaching out to Strength, too. "I don't want you to die!"

Tears falling from her face and instantly whipped away by the speed of their fall, the words pour out of her in a rush. "I always saw you. From the very beginning, I knew who you were, and how you were always fighting to take away my pain. I saw how horrible that world was, and I thought if I could make you think and feel things, you'd stop fighting and wouldn't suffer anymore." Yuu's great mechanical hands have vanished, and she looks small and fragile. Her uncovered hair is snow-white. "Then you…you became… I didn't think you'd care who I was, or worry about protecting me. But I could see what you thought, and I watched this _person _come to life, and then the only thing you ever thought about was m-me… You became so human. But…it only made things worse…"

They're accelerating, and Strength can feel a pressure settling over her, as if the air is pressing closer. Still Yuu goes on. "You suffered even more, because of me! Because you lived every day, scared for me. Even when you started to learn about me, you pitied me, and then my pain was just passed on to you that way instead of through fighting. So I realized. I realized that as long as you were in that world, you would never be happy. Even if I was happy, you'd just worry about staying safe for my sake. That's when I decided we had to switch. I did that to pay you back! You spent your whole life sharing my burdens, first when you didn't know I existed, but then when you had a choice and you _still_ decided to suffer for me…" Yuu's bright orange eyes are wide and desperate. "You aren't the one who owes me! I didn't—"

"I know." Strength reaches out and takes her hand, quieting her. "But I would have gladly stayed here and taken your pain forever. I'm your soul, and that's what I was born to do." Their speed is blurring the walls of the pit. "The fact that I learned to feel, and had a chance to live a real life… Those were special. But this is what I'm here for, and this would be my decision every time."

Everything is beginning to shake. Yuu is fading, as the projection of her slowly returns to its true location high above, but Strength is not. Instead, cracks begin to appear in her body, as though she is made of glass fragmenting under the mounting pressure. "That's not all it is!" cries Yuu. "You aren't just my soul; you're so much more than that! I love you! I love you, Strength!"

Strength only releases her hand, smiling sadly. "No!" the girl repeats. She is almost gone from Strength's sight. "Don't leave me!" But it's too late, and a moment later Yuu disappears, leaving Strength to complete her descent alone and in utter silence. The cracks in her are spreading. This is the end.

The silence is split by a long, drawn-out yell that comes from above. Suddenly, Strength can feel herself begin to slow; impossibly, in seconds, her fall ends and she hangs suspended in the air. A blinding light flares up around her, and just before it whites out her vision, she sees Yuu coming to her, reaching with an outstretched hand. Unable to resist, Strength stretches forward and takes it.

The next thing Strength knows, she is standing in the gray wasteland which used to be her home, and Yuu is standing there with her. She shakes the dizziness of the drop away, and looks to Yuu in confusion. "What…?"

"That girl, Mato, she…" Yuu looks almost as shocked as Strength. Her hood and metal hands seem to be gone for good. "She did something, and she took them both away. And I…I brought you here." She lapses into silence, but a moment later, with a sudden motion she starts to hit Strength weakly on the shoulders and chest. "Why, why, why? Why would you try to leave me like that? What if you had died? What if I lost you and…" The girl breaks down completely, and falls into Strength's fractured arms, crying. She sobs the other girl's name again and again.

Strength holds her tightly through her sobs, still trying to come to grips with what just happened. Somehow Mato had stopped her fall, and then Yuu had been able to transport them here, impossible with the presence of the demon… Strength isn't so sure she'll live after all, but she doesn't say anything to Yuu.

They rest there for a while, Yuu clinging to what Strength only gradually realizes is her naked body.

When Yuu's tears have quieted, she begins to speak, a little unsteadily. "I'm sorry I cut myself off from you. Back then, I thought you would be happy to switch places if I told you I wanted to hide from reality. But I…something you said made me so scared that you were going to keep trying to get me to switch back." Her head is still pressed against Strength's chest. "I thought you said…that you loved me."

Strength is silent, prompting Yuu to continue. "I didn't think you could be happy if you kept dwelling on me. I had to make you think I didn't care about you, and never talk to you again, and I'm so sorry…"

Pale rays of light are beginning to shine down from the shifting gray sky, falling gently around them and making the landscape nearly sparkle. Under that soft illumination, it's almost as if the ugly, decrepit ruins of a wasteland, once accustomed to holding so much pain and death, are somehow transformed into the foundations of something wonderful waiting to be built. Looking on, Strength is surprised to see, for the first time, a picture of the gray world that isn't bleak or foreboding. Rather, she feels as if there is hope in the air, hope borne on light, and as if the world of colors might finally have a future.

"This places feels different, doesn't it?" says Yuu quietly. Her thoughts are in perfect harmony with Strength's. "Like it's ready to be rebuilt."

Silence falls between them again. Strength perceives the light in sky growing clearer, more direct. "I'd go back to reality if I could be with you," Yuu says suddenly. "I don't ever want to be away from you." She tightens her hold. "Ten years was enough…right, Strength?"

"Right," Strength whispers, but before she can say any more, Yuu pulls back to an arm's length and looks her straight in the eye. "I love you." Her words are heavy with the pain of wishing to go back and say them a long time ago. "For everything you did for me and so much more. You're…" She bites her lip. "You're the only reason I made it through those years."

Strength smiles at her, smiles even though there is a cracked seam running from the corner of her eye down across her mouth. "I already said I was glad to take your pain."

"Not that. I mean…you." The girl rests a hand on Strength's heart. "You, Strength. Just you."

Her heart flutters. "Me?" She isn't sure what Yuu means.

"You were the only person who cared about me," says Yuu with a shaky laugh, "in my whole life. How could I not love you? After I talked to you, and I saw how much you _were_, what an amazing person you could be, I really fell in love with you. And it wasn't fair that you would just live in this world and never get a chance to be that person." Strength feels tears pricking her eyes again. She is about to tell Yuu how much loves her, say everything that's in her heart, when the earth begins to shake.

The ground heaves violently beneath their feet, the sudden jolt settling into quickly dissipating vibrations. Immediately Yuu again clings to Strength, who is instinctively looking up at the sky, though there is nothing physically to see there. "What's happening?" Scared, Yuu looks around them. "What is that?"

"Don't worry." Strength holds her securely. "I'm here." Beyond the boundaries of the gray world—perhaps above it, perhaps beside or below it—she can sense a shift. The balance of the worlds is changing rapidly, and it feels like something much bigger is on its way.

The light shining on the wasteland grows stronger. Light gray is gradually turning white, dark gray is turning black. It's just a trick of the light, but it looks like what was once grayscale is becoming monochrome, what was once a muddled blur is becoming clear white space marked by definite black outlines.

"Let's go see," she says simply. It's a question, really, and only once Yuu nods does Strength prepare to bring them to the orange world. But Yuu stops her, gripping her shoulder with a look of worry. "Wait. I don't want to go back there." She sounds unsure. "It's just…"

Strength lets her mind drift back to that world. "Trust me," she tells Yuu. After a second Yuu nods again hesitantly, and Strength takes them into the color-streaked void that will carry them to the orange world. And as quickly as they vanish, they reappear.

The pain and heat and light and noise that used to assault the senses have all subsided. Gone are the searing flames. Not even embers burn anymore, leaving exposed the scorched brown earth at the very bottom of the vast space. The construct of cubes has settled, too, with only entire sections slowly rotating and no longer tumbling over one another. As Strength and Yuu touch down atop the structure, they behold a world at peace. The harsh illumination from the violently flickering flames that used to dance around the fringes of the space has settled, too, and it is replaced by a calm and constant orange glow.

"It looks so different," whispers Yuu. "It looks like a sunrise."

One block is missing directly before where they stand, and in its place is a window, a fathomless tunnel through which they can see the other levels of the world of colors. Strength turns to Yuu. "Do you want to go? It looks like we can help them." The other girl is silent for a few moments. Then she grips Strength's hand tightly, and together they step forward.

. . .

As the irised torrent of light fades, and the ashes of the demon along with it, something strange begins to happen in the worlds of color. Chaos slowly becomes order as shifting landscapes settle, hazes clear, and angry skies come to rest, until finally there is a moment of stillness. In the orange world, the structure of blocks shifts to form one enormous cube and moves no more. But an instant later the stillness is overturned, and the worlds themselves begin to move in a great dimensional shift—yet really nothing more than paint running down a canvas. The colors rearrange themselves and bleed downwards, and at the same time, the gray world rises above them all, finally coming into the fullness of the light that shines down on them all as they suddenly find themselves there.

Strength gazes around at the landscape. She wants to turn to Yuu, to tell her something, but then her legs fail her and she collapses to the dusty earth.

"Strength!" Yuu drops to her knees beside the girl, hands flying to her skin. "What's wrong?" She shakes her lightly, but Strength's eyes are lost in the sky above her. "Strength?"

She remains silent for a while, and when she finds her voice, it is beginning to fade. "Look up, Yuu. Do you see that light?" Yuu glances over her shoulder but looks back immediately, unwilling to take her eyes off Strength's cracked body. "This world is where the future is," Strength says distantly, feeling her focus beginning to slip away from her. "This is…" The world she'd always considered a graveyard. "This is the new heaven."

Yuu doesn't look away now, but Strength keeps talking anyway. "Don't you see?" She looks at the bright white spaces, the dark black lines… Outlines, outlines waiting to be filled in. "It's a new start for this place…" Glass-like fragments are falling from the seams in her body. "A new start without us."

A sob catches in Yuu's throat at those words. "I'm scared, Strength," she whispers. "I don't want to go back there without you."

"You won't be alone. Saya is waiting for you. Mato will be there."

"But I want you!" Yuu buries herself in Strength's chest, wrapping her arms around the girl again. "I love you!"

Strength can feel her eyelids drifting shut. The seams are spreading. She turns to the dark-haired girl beside them. "Take care of her, Mato. Be as good a friend to her as you were for me." She shifts herself a little on the dry earth. "Yuu." Yuu looks up, tears streaking her face, and Strength says, "I'm sorry."

Yuu just looks at her. "No," she says, as if she wants to refuse what she sees before her. "You can't die. Not now." She grips Strength's hand desperately in hers.

Strength raises her other hand and caresses Yuu's cheek. "I am your soul. I fight for you, unfeeling. I exist to take your pain… But that's not all it is." She cups Yuu's face. "I love you."

"Don't!" Yuu's voice rises as Strength's eyes close. "Strength!" The hand she's holding goes limp. "Strength! Please—_Strength!_" The fractures in Strength's body connect, and she begins to break apart, crumbling to glittering dust that is borne away on the wind. Her hand vanishes from Yuu's grasp, and the girl shouts her name to the sky.

…Slowly, the sky turns from pale gray to a warm orange. With hundreds of hues reflected in it, the earth below slowly starts to fill in with color. In all that color is the heart of a girl who can no longer think or feel, but is at last content.

Yuu awakens under the orange sky of an almost-set sun, lying on soft grass beside a river which flows quietly, and she cries until the sun has set and cast everything into darkness.


	7. Ao

Hey, this doesn't seem so bad...

Wait, why isn't the story marked Complete?

* * *

><p>It's so easy for Mato to understand Black Rock Shooter. The girl never speaks, doesn't even betray a hint of emotion, but Mato always understands. She knows what it is that drives the other girl—and, after all, she isn't so different from Mato.<p>

At first Mato doesn't realize Black Rock Shooter is anything more than a dream. In fact, the first few times she 'dreams' of the girl with the deep blue eyes, she doesn't even remember her upon waking. Her memories of just how Black Rock Shooter entered her life therefore become a little fuzzy, but as time goes on her recollections couldn't be clearer. The first time was…yes, checkerboard. A world where everything is patterned with checkerboard. That's the world she can first remember seeing Black Rock Shooter in…the world she thought was the girl's.

That world, that dream, is entirely unremarkable to Mato at first. She finds herself standing in a strange place, and her natural curiosity is immediately aroused, but there really isn't much to be found. The strange, checked terrain stretches in every direction, all identical but for the strange ways it's arranged (defying gravity, taunting physics—all rather mundane for a dream). Mato yearns for adventure in her dreams; she hopes to find vast and different worlds that can be explored, and it's always a bit of a disappointment when she wakes remembering a dream that just wasn't exciting. So she walks through the strange world, waiting to discover whatever she might, and her wandering takes her deep into the realm.

Mato is alone, until she turns a corner to find another girl just ahead of her.

The girl's skin is very pale, nearly white, nearly the polar opposite of her hair, which is completely black—unless it's blue? It looks black, but with the distance separating them, Mato can't be sure. The long twintails of her hair fall past an unzipped jacket with a hood and a pair of shorts, but the only other thing she wears is a thin bikini top, leaving several thin scars exposed on her midriff.

"Who are you?" asks Mato, approaching the girl. There is no response, but for some reason that doesn't surprise her. "My name is Mato Kuroi," she says, holding out her hand. "Pleased to meet you!"

Looking down at her outstretched hand only for a second, the blue-eyed girl turns away from Mato and begins to walk off. Her pace is regular, as if she isn't trying to distance herself but is simply continuing on her way. Undeterred, Mato follows her. "Why are you here?" The girl doesn't even look at her. "Do you live here?" Again no answer is forthcoming, but Mato thinks that fits. The girl looks at home in the checkered landscape. Although, the way she's moving around… "Are you looking for something?"

As soon as she's said that, the other girl comes to an abrupt halt. Mato looks at her expectantly for a moment, but she only stares in another direction. Finally Mato follows her gaze, and she sees something strange in the distance: a glowing trail, made of insubstantial bands woven seemingly from light. The pale, ethereal green lines trail off far into the realm, disappearing only at the horizon. After a pause, the girl changes direction and heads toward the light. Mato is right behind her.

Mato can't help but talk to the dark-haired girl as they walk. "Those are bad scars. How did you get them?" Her new traveling companion is as silent as before, and Mato doesn't see her expressionless face change a fraction. "I'm sorry you got hurt like that," she says. "I hope you stay safe from now on."

They've reached the trail of light, and the silent girl begins to follow it, Mato just a few steps behind. But the trail leads somewhere different for Mato, and walking along it she finds herself awake again, far from the world with the checkerboard pattern.

Mato doesn't understand anything about the blue-eyed girl yet. But the very next night, she dreams of her again, still following that mysterious light. She does the same the night after, and the night after that. By the time Mato realizes they aren't just dreams, she already knows the girl's name. Black Rock Shooter's name. She sees other worlds, sometimes—foggy realms of gray, usually—and on occasion she sees other girls with glowing eyes. But those are always indistinct and distant, and easily forgotten. The only who comes to her clearly is Black Rock Shooter, and to Mato, she's the only one who matters.

Soon, they really have become traveling companions. Not all of Mato's nights find her actually in the world of checkerboard, and it seems like half the time she is merely seeing into that world, but when she is there she doesn't miss an opportunity to talk to Black Rock Shooter. Mato doesn't mind that the girl doesn't answer her. She doesn't even mind that her presence is never even acknowledged. She's interested in the other girl, and she think it's only fair to tell Black Rock Shooter about herself if she plans to find out more about her.

Besides, Mato doesn't much like the dreams where she just watches the girl. It always feels like something bad is about to happen, something she'll be unable to prevent. It always feels like Black Rock Shooter is in danger, and those fears are soon confirmed.

She's having one such dream when Black Rock Shooter is suddenly attacked. At first the checkered world is the same as always, silent and still, but then a shadow darts from nowhere, resolving into the form of a tall woman with long and dark hair who rushes at Black Rock Shooter. In her hands is a large, sawtoothed sword which she swings viciously at the blue-eyed girl from behind.

Mato cries out, but Black Rock Shooter is already moving. She sidesteps the attack, and in an instant a thin blade has leapt into her hand. Without a pause in her motion, she levels a slice at the woman's head, forcing her to draw back. They face off briefly, then dash forward the next moment to cross swords. The ring of metal bounces off nothing and reverberates around the desolate landscape, fading into mournful echoes.

Powerless to do anything but watch, Mato can see clearly how practiced Black Rock Shooter's movements are. She can see the jagged edge of her sword, the countless pits and scratches that cover its surface, changing the very shape of what was probably once a straight and smooth blade. Even now, the girl is emotionless, struggling back and forth with her opponent, both aiming and defending deathblows, all with the same lack of expression she's had since Mato first saw her. All this tells Mato the girl is used to fighting, but far from making her feel better, that knowledge only makes her more afraid. She's scared for Black Rock Shooter, and not just because of this battle.

Eventually the combatants break apart. The woman lowers her weapon and retreats slowly, but Black Rock Shooter doesn't stop advancing. Even when her foe begins to sink into the earth and vanish, the pale girl only quickens her pace, finally breaking into a run and stabbing her sword down violently into the patch of checkered ground the woman just left.

Mato comes to her later, or maybe on a different night. The girl sits in the same place as before, perhaps waiting for the missing trail of light to return, so Mato sits with her. "Is this world a place where you have to fight a lot?" she asks. There is a pause where she studies the girl's face. "I don't like fighting."

Black Rock Shooter turns to look at her, her blue eyes appearing so deep Mato thinks she might lose herself in them. Mato is surprised, but she continues on. "If you keep doing this, you could really get hurt." She looks at the other girl's scars and thinks, _Again._ "I don't want you to get hurt. Why do you have to fight?"

Any hope of a response is dashed with a turn of the girl's head. Mato doesn't give up. "When I have a problem, I always try to work it out as peacefully as I can. Even if somebody seems like they're too angry at me to talk, I just wait and see if there's any way we can resolve things." She pauses. "Does that sound like something you could do?"

The landscape dissolves into morning. The imprint of checkerboard is hard to rub from her eyes.

Mato is on the outside looking in again the next time she sees Black Rock Shooter. Either the light reappeared or something else drew the girl forward, because as she turns a corner, she finally arrives at her destination—or, rather, her destination imposes itself on her. One moment, she is surrounded by checkerboard; the next, a blinding flash of light has faded to reveal a world with the backdrop of parts of dolls, jumbles of toys, and oversized candies. It is a world filled with the pieces of broken things.

Black Rock Shooter ignores her surroundings entirely. It's obvious she isn't familiar with this place, but it seems as though she doesn't even regard it enough to care about where she's going or how she might find her way back. She walks forward with single-minded determination, Mato watching her from afar as she searches through the bizarre terrain of objects. Finally she stops in a clearing free of the world's overlarge clutter, where there is a veiled girl draped in chains, standing on a high, coiled pile of the same. The faint light surrounding her has the same ghostly quality as the trail they followed. And Mato begins to understand.

This girl is someone important to Black Rock Shooter. She is the one she's been searching for all along. Mato can tell, because she sees the way Black Rock Shooter almost reaches out to her as the spidery machine slams her into a wall and holds her there, crushing her mercilessly. She can tell because she's forced to watch as the girl with the crown stands on top of her and grinds downward with powerful metal wheels, and Mato can see how even then she faces the veiled girl instead of her attacker.

And Mato can relate. She can't help but think about Yomi—wouldn't she defend Yomi if she had to? Fight for her? Certainly she would look for her if she were missing, look for her with the same single-mindedness as Black Rock Shooter has. So she isn't too different from the blue-eyed girl after all.

Still, Mato is worried. Watching the battle unfold, watching how even the veiled girl lashes out at Black Rock Shooter with chains when she gets too close, she knows for certain that this world is one where the girl is constantly forced to fight, and she hates it._ It isn't fair._ Black Rock Shooter's cannon destroys the mechanical spider, but the girl controlling it draws a sword and shield and attacks again. _It isn't fair._ The girl with the veil slips away into the world of dolls while the other two continue to fight bitterly. _It isn't fair!_

Anyone else might have accepted it, and reasoned there was nothing to be done, no way to change the way of a world so far removed from reality that it only appears in one's dreams. But Mato won't accept it.

_It just isn't fair._

Black Rock Shooter follows the veiled girl to a decrepit mansion, where the third girl ambushes her again, and they pick up where they left off. This time Mato can see the crowned girl's constant distracted glances, always falling on the figure wrapped in chains, as if she's unable to take her eyes off her for long. But all Black Rock Shooter can see is holes in her defense, and finally she deals crippling blows to the girl's legs while her back is turned. With the girl helpless at her feet, she raises her blade high.

Mato won't accept it, and for the first time she purposefully wills herself to move from one world to another.

"Wait!" Her shout makes Black Rock Shooter stop and look up, raising her head in time to see Mato running over the slope of toy parts and down to the two of them. "You don't have to kill her!" she cries, stumbling to halt and breathing hard. "You don't always have to fight!"

She holds out her hand, indicating the fallen opponent. "Do you remember what I told you? She doesn't want to fight, not really! She really cares about that other girl, just like you do!" She is watched guardedly by the intelligent eyes shadowed beneath the crown. "So you don't have to fight. You could…talk!"

Silence fills the strange world of dolls. Standing there, talking to the impassive Black Rock Shooter—Black Rock Shooter, who never speaks—Mato has to laugh at herself. "Maybe not talk." She moves closer to the black-haired girl, and smiles at her. "I believe in you, Black Rock Shooter."

Black Rock Shooter gazes back at her, her sword neutrally at her side, and Mato feels butterflies in her stomach. Those deep blue eyes, locked with hers, and that silent look… Maybe the girl will never admit it, but Mato can see it in her. She can see that under her standoffish exterior, past her cold gaze and the way she always turns away, there's…

A sudden flash of light paints the world green, and Mato feels her own world slipping back into focus unbidden.

The woman with the great sword has appeared in their midst, and her presence seems to scare the crowned girl badly.

Even though Mato has to watch as the veiled girl is spirited away from Black Rock Shooter yet again, even though she has to watch as the desperate, frightened girl who reminds her of Kagari wildly attacks again, and comes within an inch of striking her target and there is a flash of Black Rock Shooter's sword and the girl's head is no longer attached to her body… Even though she has to watch all those things, she cannot forget that night for showing her that in Black Rock Shooter there's…

There's a person who simply likes Mato.

Things are looking up in Mato's own life. Kagari, who used to hate her, has come to school and is making friends and being reasonably nice even to Mato. It seems like Yomi's words really reached the girl, and Mato can't help but feel pride and admiration for the shy girl who found the courage to stand and up and shout down her friend's protests to stay shut away from the world. Now Mato wants to take Yomi places, take her to see all kinds of people and worlds and colors, and now she knows Yomi will be happy to go. Then there is Yuu, Yuu who's stood beside her through all this insanity plaguing the beginning of her school year, Yuu who's always been her best friend.

With her friends supporting her like this, Mato is eager to move on with what she knows will be a wonderful year. Saya, the counselor, still offers kind and helpful words, but she doesn't think she needs them any longer.

Meanwhile, in another world, she spends more and more time with the silent, blue-eyed girl. It takes her a while before she can talk about what happened in the world of dolls, but until then she is content to just stay beside Black Rock Shooter. The girl seems to tolerate her presence more each night (even welcome it, Mato wants to believe), and she never walks away from her now. They're growing closer, mentally and physically.

"I'm sorry," she tells Black Rock Shooter. They're resting together in another sort of inter-world, like the realm of checkerboard, though this one is a vast, empty wasteland filled with nothing but gray. "I didn't mean for any of that that to happen."

She sits beside the pale girl with a sigh. "I don't blame you… Black Rock Shooter. It's just..." Frustrated, she says, "If that girl had been able to let it go, there would have been no reason to fight anymore." A glance at her eternally silent companion. "You get it, don't you?"

A minute of stillness passes between them, then Mato leans gently on the other girl's shoulder. She doesn't say a word, just rests her head, closes her eyes, and lets the feel of skin replace the melancholy chill of the wasteland. Black Rock Shooter remains silent and still as a statue, but just before Mato drifts off to sleep, she thinks she can feel girl tilt her head to rest against Mato's.

When Mato wakes, she is momentarily disoriented. Black Rock Shooter is no longer pressed close to her, and from her lying position on the hard earth, she sees the other girl standing at the lip of the ridge they're atop. Her gaze scans the landscape below, searching. For just a moment, Mato is possessed by the urge to call out to the girl, so they can go back to sleep together… But she knows Black Rock Shooter wouldn't so much as turn around. So she gets up.

She is approaching the girl when a sudden flare of light bursts into a bright blue flame that burns around her left eye. The appearance of the flame is so abrupt, so unexpected, that Mato's step falters.

"Rock…?" she says hesitantly. The name sounds small and timid even to Mato's ears. She tries again, willing the usual confidence back into her voice. "What is it?" The girl doesn't acknowledge her. Her eyes are now fixed on a single point in the distance.

Mato looks out, following the girl's sight line once again, and after a few seconds of searching she is able to make out a cluster of indistinct, dark shapes against the pale earth. She isn't sure what she's seeing, but she is quickly distracted by the intense flame wisping from the side of Black Rock Shooter's face. Whatever it is, it makes Mato uneasy. There's something wrong with the girl's expression, as well; it looks too drawn, too…cold. "Rock," she says again, and this time the girl turns to look at her.

Delicately, Mato brings her hand up Black Rock Shooter's face. "If you're like this, I can't…" She brushes the girl's cheek with her fingers. "…touch you."

Black Rock Shooter looks down at her with the same lack of emotion as ever, but slowly the flame dies down and vanishes. She doesn't flinch, doesn't even move, as Mato cups the side of her face with one hand. She doesn't blink as Mato closes the distance between them. And she doesn't pull away as Mato stands on tiptoes and kisses her.

Mato draws back, breathing, "Come back safe…"

She isn't sure if she wants to 'dream' of Black Rock Shooter those next few days, as the girl pursues the raven-haired woman in the world of gray. Easily she understands why she's doing it, and knows she would do the same if she had to—fighting, risking her life…and others'. But she doesn't want to think about her Black Rock Shooter in such danger, and above all she doesn't want to think about her Rock being forced to kill again. She knows, just knows, that the girl doesn't want to fight any more than she has to. _It isn't fair…_

The decision of focusing on the other world or not is taken away from her when conflict rears its ugly head in her own world, and suddenly her life feels as thought it's headed toward the same low it was when she first went over to Yomi's house.

Yomi is acting strangely, as if the pieces of her self are being lost one by one as she forgets all the things that make Yomi Yomi. Yuu is avoiding her, and she's hearing strange things from classmates, people who've shared classes with Yuu all year failing to remember the girl. Kagari is starting to follow her around, seeming as though she's searching for something she can't find and consoling herself by clinging to Mato. All these things are enough to force her thoughts away from Black Rock Shooter, both waking and those when she's asleep.

There's the moment she sees Yomi's painting.

Then there is the moment when Saya advances on her, and Mato is too terrified to notice the tears in the woman's eyes or the tremors of the hands that close around her throat.

She runs from the counselor's office, runs and doesn't stop running until she has collapsed on the path beside a river of palest blue. Her breaths are ragged, and her legs feel like they're on fire. She doesn't know how far she's run or where she is, only that she was looking desperately for something and she couldn't find it. Her exhaustion causes her to slip in and out of consciousness, and what she finds when her mind falls into the other world is just the horror to cap off a day filled with horror. In a world of graves, Black Rock Shooter has finally been reunited with the veiled girl she sought, and the two are locked in a vicious, bitter struggle.

"What are you doing?" screams Mato, though Black Rock Shooter cannot hear her. "Why…?" She breaks down into tears. She doesn't want to believe what her Rock is doing, but at the same time she can't help her worry for the girl she just _likes_ so much. "You could…die!"

"I'm so sorry, Mato." The voice is distant. Somebody has come to where she lies in her own world, but through her feverish tiredness she hardly registers their presence. Somebody's hand is stroking her hair. Yuu's? Then why does she feel like she's lying in the gray world, asleep, and it is Black Rock Shooter caressing her? That didn't happen…did it?

The gray world. The other world. Wherever Rock is. That's where she needs to be. She needs to be with Rock…

"That won't work this time." Yuu is still by her side. "Even if you can reach Black Rock Shooter, just going to that world will only get you killed."

Mato isn't lucid enough to wonder how Yuu knows these things. All she cares about is reaching Rock. Rock, who she understands so well. Because she stopped fighting the yellow-haired girl. Because there must be an explanation for this, too. Because Rock wouldn't, couldn't have attacked the girl she's been chasing.

"You don't have much time," says Yuu. "If you want… I can send you there. I can put you inside Black Rock Shooter. But, Mato, listen. It won't be like going there when you're sleeping. If you aren't careful, you could lose yourself in that world forever. You won't be able to wake up."

Mato fights through the haze clouding her mind, opening her eyes and locking them with Yuu's which looks strangely orange…

Her friend asks, "Are you prepared to risk that?"

"Yes," Mato whispers hoarsely.

. . .

The moment her consciousness connects with Black Rock Shooter's, Mato begins to shout desperately to the girl. "Stop it! You don't have to do this! You _know_ you don't have to do this!" Green light, flashes of metal. Her vision is blurred, but she can feel that Black Rock Shooter isn't slowing. "Rock!" she shouts. The veiled girl's scythe is flying toward her head. "I don't want you to be hurt! I care about you! I love you!"

There isn't a flicker of hesitation in the other girl. The blue flame comes to life over her eye and she ducks the scythe's blade and brings her sword up in an arc. "Can't you hear me?" The veiled girl's weapon is knocked from her hand, leaving her defenseless. "There, now stop—" Mato sees her sword come back up. "Oh, my God, Rock, what are you doing?" She sees her point the sword at the other girl. She screams, one last time, "_Rock!_"

Without hesitating, Black Rock Shooter plunges the sword forward and buries the cold metal in the girl's heart.

And everything stops.

Inside Black Rock Shooter's mind, Mato chokes on her words. Hot tears stream down her cheeks, but she only realizes they're there when the trembling hand raised to her mouth comes away wet. The veiled girl slides off Rock's jagged sword with a hideous sound and hits the earth, already dead. And it's only the beginning.

The first thing she remembers—the memories are Black Rock Shooter's, but any such distinction is practically irrelevant—is the beginning of the fight that has just ended…if it can be called a fight. All Mato sees is the veiled girl trying to protect herself, first with an army of reanimated soldiers, and then with her own hands once Black Rock Shooter has decimated that army with her cannons. Slowly she is worn down, the exhaustion of running from the blue-eyed girl for so long (now Mato realizes that's what she was doing) finally becoming too much.

She collapses dead to the earth, run through the chest. The girl she thought Black Rock Shooter wanted to protect.

Next Mato remembers what the girl did those nights she was preoccupied with the problems in her own life, and soon she can feel bile rising in her throat. First Black Rock Shooter destroys a large stone pillar, and the rubble crashes down on the huddled crowd of hooded girls, crushing some. Then, from her high perch, she begins to target the defenseless, innocent beings one at a time with single bursts from her cannon, killing them individually, methodically. She hadn't seen the red-eyed woman in the distance; she saw these girls, and she marched there with the sole intention of slaughtering them. Finally, only one remains—Mato can see her face in terrible detail, can see the way she shakes violently at the deathly pale girl's approach—and for a moment Black Rock Shooter pauses. But then the flame begins to burn, and she strides forward and beheads the girl with one swing.

Worst of all, Mato can see the look on the face of the woman, who up until a moment ago had been tenderly caring for the girls. The woman she'd thought wanted nothing but to fight Black Rock Shooter.

Mato crawls to a corner of the mind she's trapped in, holding herself and trying uselessly to wipe the sick taste from her mouth. She doesn't want to remember any more. None of it makes sense. How can any of this be the girl who listened to her, and stayed her blade before the crowned girl? Just having thought that, the next memory makes her want to scream.

It's only a moment after she, Mato, has left the world of dolls. Before the girl with the crown even notices the dark-haired woman (the one Mato thought had scared her), Black Rock Shooter raises her sword from beside her and stabs at the girl, wounding her. Looking terrified, the girl runs and hides, slowly making her way atop a pile of broken things. Taking her last chance for survival, she jumps down, driving her sword at Black Rock Shooter, but her counterattack is anticipated, and with the flame alit in her eye Black Rock Shooter cuts her down at the neck. All this, after what Mato had said to her, the _instant_ she was out of sight.

Her head falls from her neck and joins the other broken things. The girl she thought Black Rock Shooter had spared.

After that, the memories are a confused jumble. She sees the checkerboard world (the world she thought was Black Rock Shooter's) but in reverse, and it leads to an ugly world of sky and pits and spikes that move and grow, violently punching holes in all that surrounds them. But it doesn't stop there, and before long Mato is remembering the gray world as it was a decade ago, filled with mindless girls who fight and die and know and feel nothing. And she remembers Black Rock Shooter, the worst of them all, hunting and killing, chasing one girl with large metal hands, tracking down every last one of them and tossing their bodies into the deep chasms of the wasteland once she's finished butchering them.

She kills everything around her, and finally there aren't any left, and the canyons are mass graves. Finally, she's the only one who remains. Black Rock Shooter. The heartless monster, who now stands over the body of her newest victim in a world already filled with tombstones. Because the kind girl, the intelligent girl who listened to what Mato said and understood and simply _liked_ Mato, that girl never existed. The flame burns violently around her eye.

The girl she didn't want to be hurt, who hurt everyone that crossed her path.

The girl she thought was in danger, who was the sole danger in the other world.

The girl she loved…the girl she thought loved her.

A purple spark tints the flame over her eye.

A voice floats to Mato as she huddles in the corner of her own consciousness, hugging her knees. "Mato…"

Purple replaces blue.

"Mato, Mato…"

Black Rock Shooter stands over her, looking down with disdain in her violet eyes. "Did you miss me, Mato?"

* * *

><p>to be concluded<p> 


	8. Murasaki

At long last, I've done what I set out to, and written something close enough to a thorough exploration of the hundreds of ideas ricocheting around my head about Black Rock Shooter and all the things left up to the imagination...while also writing a collection of selfcest yuri stories. Better yet, I managed to have the kind of thin line connecting them that I wanted. I'm not out of ideas, but this will be my last BRS fic for a while. I can't say I'm completely satisfied with how things have gone in this story, but I'll let the chapter speak for itself.

Thank you for reading, and a special thanks to everyone kind enough to tell me what you thought of the story.

* * *

><p>"So now you know."<p>

The cloudy surroundings are gone, replaced by a solid but no less ugly world of spikes tinged purple and navy blue. It's much darker than the memory of it Mato had seen inside Black Rock Shooter's mind, and instead of a bright sky above them, there is only more shadow.

"The truth about this world…"

Mato is curled up in a corner of the clearing they stand in, hugging her knees. She wants to wake up, but she remembers what Yuu told her, and she knows that she can't…and possibly won't ever be able to. She is trapped in this place, this ugly world that isn't her own, alone but for the purple-eyed girl who stands menacingly over her. Mato wants to ignore her, pretend she doesn't exist—

Black Rock Shooter slams her enormous, pointed cannon into the earth beside her, the metal clanking loudly, causing Mato to recoil. "And about me," she completes.

Getting to her feet, Mato slowly backs away from the pale girl, but Black Rock Shooter advances. Behind her snakes a chain connected to the cannon, its metal links rattling as she walks. "Don't you see how foolish you were? How stupid you had to be to think this world could be at _peace_"—she spits the word, disgust etched in the lines of her face—"or that any of us want it to be? You don't know anything, little girl."

They're gradually circling the small clearing, an exposed surface of dark purple checkerboard bordered by rocky spikes. Mato is still unwilling to open her mouth. She's not even sure what she would say. She thinks she might just cry if she tries.

"I got so tired of your speeches," Black Rock Shooter goes on. There are rhythmic clanks of the armor she now wears accompanying each of her footfalls. "Some girl, coming to my world and telling me what to do? I should have killed you the moment I saw you."

"Kill me…" Mato whispers. "Like you killed everyone else?"

"That's right." There's a brief note of malicious glee in the girl's voice. "You don't even know what it means to kill someone here. You don't know what that means for your world."

Mato glares at her. "You mean taking away pain."

"So you do know." Black Rock Shooter's expression is just as flat as always, but marred with a downturn of disdain. "And you still—"

"But that's wrong!" Mato's sudden shout silences Black Rock Shooter, whose surprise quickly turn to anger a moment later at having been interrupted. "That's not how you deal with suffering! You don't just forget! That's wrong, just like it's wrong to fight in this world!"

Black Rock Shooter remains silent, then smiles a faint, unsettling, smile. "I never said that was why I killed them."

Reeling, horror clawing at her insides, Mato resumes backing away from the dark-haired girl. "What?" says the _thing_, the demon. "Don't tell me you're scared of me. I thought…" She reaches out a hand, fingers almost catching Mato's chin, and the girl stumbles backward and increases her pace to get away. "I thought you loved me."

"I don't love you!" Mato shouts before she can stop herself. Black Rock Shooter's twisted smile only widens.

"You don't?" the other girl says, stopping and allowing Mato to widen the gap between them, knowing she can't get away. "Why not? Why don't you love me? If you're going to belong to anyone, you might as well belong to me…" She leers at Mato. "Right?"

Slowly shaking her head, Mato backs up until her back is pressed against the stones bordering the clearing.

"Why don't you love me?" Black Rock Shooter asks, and if it wasn't for her false smile, Mato wouldn't think she was acting at all. "You said you did!"

"Not to you." Mato can feel her voice becoming choked. "I said that to the real Black Rock Shooter. I said that to _my_ Black Rock Shooter!"

"Oh? You said that to 'Rock,' did you?" Abruptly, the girl's smile vanishes, and her voice is pure poison as she advances on Mato. "She _doesn't exist._" Before Mato can react, Black Rock Shooter viciously kicks her in the knee, and instantly she feels her leg give way. As soon as she's fallen onto her knees, the purple-eyed girl smashes a hand into the side of her head, and Mato is knocked to the ground, seeing stars.

"Stop playing make-believe, you naïve brat!" Black Rock Shooter roars, kicking at Mato as she tries to move away. "There is no girl who loves you! There is no girl who ever cared about a word you said!" She punctuates each of her words with a stomp which Mato tries to push aside. "There's…just…me!"

Mato rolls aside as her foot comes down the last time, and quickly leaps to her feet. Black Rock Shooter keeps closing in. "Why don't you fight back?" she demands. "You can't solve your problems without fighting, in this world or any other!" She lunges at Mato again. "Fight back!" Mato hurls herself to one side; Black Rock Shooter turns to follow her and attacks again. "Fight _back!_"

Mato glares defiantly back, but there are tears dripping from her eyes now. "I want my Rock," she says, her voice small. She tries to stand upright despite the pain in her leg. "Give her back."

Infuriated, the violet-eyed girl charges at her, yelling, "Didn't you hear what I said?" She drives an elbow into Mato's chest, knocking the wind out of her. "There's no such person!"

Mato gasps and stumbles backward, breathing raspy breaths for a few seconds. Black Rock Shooter doesn't stop advancing on her, all the while hissing malicious words. "I am Black Rock Shooter. There is no one else."

Trapped by the ring of stone spikes, Mato can't back away any further. "I miss her," she whispers.

"You miss a lie." Black Rock Shooter comes to a stop, too, standing just in front of Mato. "It's a lie you had better stop believing, because if you don't fight back…" She holds her arm out to the side. The chain trailing from it snaps taut, and then her cannon comes flying to attach to the outstretched arm. "I'll destroy you."

"I'm…" Slowly Mato looks up into the girl's violet eyes, into the bright flame burning over one of them. "I'm not doing it because I think you're Rock."

"Then why?" shouts Black Rock Shooter. "You don't honestly believe you can _work out your problems_ by _talking_ to me!"

Even as the other girl's words grow louder and angrier again, the strength is returning to Mato's voice. "Why shouldn't I try?"

"Everything you believed in was wrong!" Practically screaming with rage, Black Rock Shooter raises her cannon and points it at Mato, holding it perfectly parallel to the ground despite its massive size. "The girl you talked to, the things you said, your _love_! Fighting is the only way you can change anything, in this world or yours! How has all your love helped this world?" The pattern on the cannon's surface begins to glow purple, and a hum fills the air. "Did it save any of those others? Is it going to stop me from killing you, right now?"

"No…" Mato doesn't flinch. "But I won't fight you."

The air seems to vibrate with Black Rock Shooter's fury. "You're dying alone, do you understand that? Alone, because you wasted your time trying to save a girl who never cared about you, because you thought you'd rather not _fight_ in your life until your friends eventually walked right over you and left. And then they all fell to the same weakness you did, in the end. What do you think would have happened to those two pathetic girls if I hadn't killed their—"

"Don't," says Mato, her voice quiet but steady, "talk about my friends like that."

"They would have killed each other, or themselves! That's what they got for letting themselves get involved with this world. All their _love _and every foolish thing they hoped for in this place all came to nothing!" Black Rock Shooter readies her weapon one more time. "Just as your efforts were in vain."

Mato closes her eyes, preparing for death or whatever other void will swallow her up, but suddenly she feels something quite different form darkness. She feels…color. And it is as if something is reaching out to her in that color and light, pushing its way through some boundary to connect with her. She feels…

_Don't listen to her, Mato!_

She opens her eyes. "Is that really what you think?"

Black Rock Shooter's eyes widen, and she makes no response.

"Or…" Mato continues. "Are you just lying?" Slowly, Black Rock Shooter lowers the cannon, and from the expression on her face, Mato can tell she feels the same thing Mato does. "They're out there," she says, deathly quiet, watching the other girl's reaction. "Everyone you killed…tried to kill."

The sensation of color grows stronger, brighter with each passing second. As the pale girl looks up and around her, almost appearing panicked, as if she could somehow stop the threat if she could see it, Mato takes a step forward. "You're wrong." She says it with such force that Black Rock Shooter looks down at her in shock. "You're wrong…Black Rock Shooter." She does not turn her defiant stare away from the girl's face.

"You—" Black Rock Shooter begins, but Mato cuts her off. "You don't have to fight. None of you do. You say love hasn't done anything for this world?" Her voice falters once, and her eyes fill with tears, tears for the girl she lost who never really existed. "Even if I…even if I can't have it, there is love in this world. Look what love can do. Look…" Her words hitch again. "Look what a little love did."

Yellow light begins to shine somewhere high in the darkness, bathing their surroundings in a soft glow like colored sunlight.

"Love can heal you," says Mato while the light grows ever brighter. "It…it can make a crippled girl walk again."

The beams—no, the torrent of light breaks as it hits the ground, and when the great burst of illumination fades, Mato can see two girls with golden hair standing close together. Their hands are linked, the one who stands atop two powerful wheels and the one who stands on her own legs. Kagari meets Mato's gaze and nods, and Chariot raises her other arm protectively. Black Rock Shooter looks at them briefly, but quickly turns back to Mato; it is as if she can't look away. "What?" says Mato, and even as she speaks, there is a glint of green high above them. "You didn't think anything could heal the pain you've caused?" She takes a step forward.

The green light falls over them now, as in the darkness above it transforms from a glow to a tangible stream, ever descending, but something strange is happening to the ground beneath their feet. The patterns of checkerboard, before stained only with purple like the rest of the landscape, seem to have retained some of the yellow light that fell upon it. Now a few scattered squares begin to turn faintly green, too, just in time for the great stream of light—not just light, Mato knows, but the presence of another world—to reach the ground.

"Love can bring you peace," Mato whispers, unable to stop the tears from welling up. "Yomi's courage… Just look at her courage…"

Amid the dissipating green light stand Yomi and a veiled girl in a black dress, and they too hold hands. All the anger, the hatred and disdain, are gone from Dead Master's face. The way she grasps Yomi's hand is almost as though Yomi is supporting her, but they both stand tall. Yomi looks at Mato and smiles. This time Black Rock Shooter's eyes only flick over to them for an instant. Shock is written on her features. Again, Mato steps toward the black-haired girl. "If my friends get the strength to not be afraid of you from each other, then I'm not afraid of you, either."

Black Rock Shooter makes a jerky motion, as if she wants to bring her cannon up to aim at Mato but simply can't. Already the checkered squares underfoot are showing highlights of red, and the light in the sky is not far behind. Crimson and scarlet descend in a rush, a world of red merging together with the darkness and shattering it and casting everything in fiery light. Like the colors before it, it splits and flares up and fades when it reaches the ground, but it never really leaves the surroundings.

"Love can bring back the things you care about, the things you thought you'd lost." Mato is crying, but she doesn't falter. "Saya…and Saw… They care so much. They want to make this world a better place."

There appears not just Saya, hand resting on Black Gold Saw's on the hilt of that blood-red sword, but all the hooded girls raised from the wasteland by the two of them. At first they stand in a circle around the two women, as if to protect them from Black Rock Shooter—who doesn't even look now—but then Saya and Gold Saw step in front of them with fierce determination in their bearing. "If anyone believes this world can be saved…" Another step forward. "Then I won't let you tear it apart."

Now it is orange light that falls on them from above, and Mato remembers how strangely orange Yuu's eyes seemed when she came and found her. Now she understands, and as everything is bathed in the hue of a sunset, her heart goes out not just to Strength—her Yuu—but to the girl who gave her a chance to meet Mato and become best friends with her, to live without pain or fear. The new color joins the others in the tints of the checkerboard. Now, with all those hues filling it, it somehow looks like there's only one missing…

"Love can be the reason to give someone a wonderful gift," says Mato, distracted looking for the appearance of her best friend out of the light. "Even if you're apart for a long time… It can make it like you never left each other."

When Strength and Yuu become visible from their pulse of light, they aren't just holding hands. Yuu—snow-white hair and orange eyes—is clinging to Strength, the side of her head pressed close to Strength's bare chest and stomach. There are fractures in Strength's body, but with Yuu holding her tight, it doesn't look like they could possibly do her any harm. It doesn't look like anything could ever separate them. Mato takes one final step forward, and now she stands right in front of Black Rock Shooter. "If they could find each other after so long, how can I be alone?"

There is one color missing, and Mato knows it needs to be there, even though it pains her to understand what that means.

"All of them are happy together, all of them know what love is. So…" She takes a deep breath. "You're the only one left, Black Rock Shooter!"

"What?" Black Rock Shooter finally speaks, unable to put anything but surprise behind her voice.

"Even if I can't have what I wanted…" Mato feels the tears rising again when she thinks of her Rock; she forces them down. "Even I'm the only one who doesn't get to… If I'm…" She shakes herself. "I know you can change! I saw it in you! There isn't only the part of you that wants to destroy. You can't deny it."

Flashes, pieces, fragments of memories are bouncing around her mind's eye…

"There was something in you that listened to what I said! At first, you were only focused on one thing…"

She remembers when she first met Black Rock Shooter, and the girl nearly looked right through her, her single-minded focus on the trail of light that led away into the horizon…

"But then you started to hear me! I know you did!"

She remembers how with each passing night, Black Rock Shooter would turn her head more and more often when Mato spoke, how the number of her seemingly disinterested glances increased each time Mato came to see her…

"And, eventually, you cared enough about the things I said that you even stopped fighting, for me!"

She remembers the look Black Rock Shooter gave her when she ran down to her in the world with the pink sky, begging her to stop what she was doing. Both the crowned girl and the veiled girl looked at her then, but there was something more in the blue eyes of Black Rock Shooter. Mato is sure of it…

"After that, I thought for sure you'd act differently. And you did…" Mato pauses, and suddenly she finds herself putting words to a nameless doubt she's carried since a night that seems long ago. "But…then there were times when you weren't…you."

She remembers the violent flame that burned over one eye, when she awoke in the gray wasteland and found the other girl had moved away from her. The flame was blue, but the eye beneath it… The eye wasn't.

"So there is a good part of you," Mato whispers, and for the first time her gaze has left the purple-eyed girl's face, as she stares in wonder at no one thing in particular. "And that part of you did care about what I said." She is telling herself as much as she is the other girl. "And _she_…she cared about me."

The girl who started out indifferent to Mato's presence, yet who felt something strong enough to let Mato travel alongside her. Anyone else she would have attacked, but with Mato, the thought never even crossed her mind. And the more Mato talked to her, the more she told the girl about herself, the more the girl started to like her. Just simply like her, and that was something the girl had never felt before. She liked her so much that she started to listen to what she said and trust her, and when she did what Mato asked and saw the results of those very different actions, she liked her even more. And eventually, when she saw just how much Mato liked _her_, and how determined Mato was to help this silent girl form another world whom she barely knew, she fell in love with her.

She remembers resting her head on Black Rock Shooter's shoulder. She almost remembers the other girl learning against her and, just before she drifted off to sleep, brushing a shy kiss over her hair. She doesn't remember anything after that, yet… Black Rock Shooter stayed there while Mato slept, Mato who she loved and admired and wanted to protect so much. She brushed the girl's dark hair and wished with all her heart…

"Ridiculous!" The girl in the black and purple armor's shout is tinged with hysteria. "None of this means anything! I'll destroy every one of these weak souls, and I'll start with you! I'll kill you!" Appearing to make a tremendous effort, she finally brings the cannon to bear, its barrel dead on Mato once again.

"You won't." Wiping the last teardrops from the corners of her eyes, Mato smiles briefly. "I'll fight…and I'll win."

"See?" screams the violet-eyed demon. "You admit it! You will fight! It's the only way you can resolve your differences with anyone, after all! You _will_ fight, fight whoever you have to! You'll fight everyone who stands in your way!"

"No." Mato shakes her head once before locking her eyes with the other girl's. "Just you."

A brilliant blue glow flares to life around them, and the dim colors reflected in the checker pattern seem to leap in response, a spectrum now complete. But this time the light doesn't come from above; instead it comes from Mato herself. As the azure illumination grows still brighter, Mato shouts fiercely, "Of course I can change this world!" The ground begins to shake. "You—just—watch me!"

The purple-eyed girl's screams are lost in the growing roar as a rainbow of colors wraps itself around Mato and the core of blue that shines from her body. "But not just me," she says, and her voices cuts easily through the noise. "Me…and you, Black Rock Shooter."

"What?" The other girl is still frozen, too scared even to shoot at Mato. She shrieks, "Why would I—"

"I wasn't talking to you," says Mato. "I was talking to Black Rock Shooter."

She holds out her hand, and moment later it is joined by another's, this one wearing a glove with a star printed on the back.

Mato looks beside her, to Black Rock Shooter, who gazes back with what Mato knows is anything but a lack of emotion. The girl's deep blue eyes lock with hers, and in a moment removed from everything going on around them, a moment in a peaceful bright blue sky, she smiles at her. And Mato smiles back, and says, "I missed you."

Together they turn to face Insane Black Rock Shooter, who has lowered her arm and is just staring, utterly still and wide-eyed. The rage has been drained from her, along with everything else, as she faces down the mouth of a cannon big enough to swallow her whole. As the titanic weapon forms, light begins to pour into it. From Saya and Black Gold Saw there is red, from Strength and Yuu there is orange, from Kagari and Chariot there is yellow, from Yomi and Dead Master there is green, and from Mato and Black Rock Shooter there is blue. From the surroundings there is even purple and every other color besides. Finally the cannon swirls with a rainbow of light that is then released, lasering forward in an instant to consume its target, who is reduced to colorless ash, then to faint dust, then nothing.

The rainbow becomes the multicolored hues of the sky above the gray world…a world ready to start anew.

Mato can't help herself. She runs to Black Rock Shooter and jumps into her arms, embracing her tightly before kissing her lips. "Rock," she murmurs. "I'm so glad you're back…" She wants to tell her a hundred things. Black Rock Shooter wraps her strong arms around Mato and hugs her back, and there is finally peace in the knowledge that Mato has reached the good part of the girl she cares about so much, and that they have all the time in the world to tell each other what they want.

But there are fractures, too, and they are spreading.

Mato doesn't even remember breaking away from Black Rock Shooter and running to her friend's side, but she will never forget how Yuu's cry fades into echoes as Strength's soul fades into light. When Mato turns, crying, to find her Rock, she sees only the ends of her twintail hair vanishing from sight as the girl turns and walks away. "Wait!" she shouts, hurt and confusion and grief, and she leaps to her feet and sprints after the other girl.

She finds her on the other side of a ridge, facing away but not moving any further into the distance. "Yuu… Strength… she…" Mato can't finish. She sinks to her knees, shaking slightly.

A hand touches her shoulder, and she looks up to find Black Rock Shooter kneeling in front of her. On her face…is a tear? But the next moment she reaches forward and encircles Mato in her arms and pulls the girl to her, holding her through her tears. They stay together for a long time, until Mato finally awakens in a dark apartment, and it is somehow only the night of the day she fell asleep beside the river colored orange.

In the weeks after, along with Yomi, Kagari, Saya, and Yuu, Mato begins putting her life back together, piece by piece. Black Rock Shooter never leaves her side, no matter which world she's in, and as the days go by, Mato lets herself open up again. She tells the blue-eyed girl about her friends, about her childhood, and about school. She tells her about everything. Black Rock Shooter doesn't talk, but with the way they link their minds, she shares just as much with Mato. It's the same between Mato and her new friends, and even the old ones, and it's the same between those friends and the certain girls in another world they like.

Mato spends more and more time in the other world, too, usually when she's asleep. It still holds painful memories of Yuu—Strength—but Mato can't run from that, and she wants to spend as much time with Black Rock Shooter as she can.

Saya's counseling sessions no longer require her to look for anything beyond one world, and when she can, she devotes that attention to Black Gold Saw and the young souls she's raising. Her thoughts are always on Yuu, who for the first time has a life with friends that is free from pain. She smiles and laughs with the rest of them and every day grows a little more accustomed to living, but she still cries whenever she thinks too much about Strength.

Kagari, wheelchair a distant memory, has stayed involved in the baking club and other school activities, but she also spends much of her time with Yomi. Chariot likewise travels around the other world, but she always returns to eat the macarons Kagari brings her. Yomi herself is busy knitting bracelets, painting, composing—creating things. Her creativity is mirrored in Dead Master, so different from once long ago, and the ruins of the other world seem to sometimes be rebuilt overnight.

All of them remain friends, and all of them are at last happy. Five girls and their other world counterparts… A rainbow of colors, even if orange is missing.

And one night, Black Rock Shooter takes Mato to the world of many colors to show her something. It's past nightfall, and the palette of bright colors that normally fills the once-cloudy sky and warms the once-gray earth has been transformed into a deep midnight blue starfield with multicolored points of light for stars. But instead of lying on their backs together and watching that night sky, as they've done before, Mato follows Black Rock Shooter until finally she sees what the girl wants her to see. Or rather, who.

"Yuu?"

A spectrum of shared identity, difference, sameness, and love; a complete rainbow.


End file.
